noun
definition
Extinct elephant-like mammal of the genus Mammut that flourished worldwide from Miocene through Pleistocene times; differs from elephants and mammoths in the form of the molar teeth.
Examples of mastodons in a Sentence
And it equates to the hunter-gatherer who got sustenance by hunting mastodons and gathering berries.
Ok so maybe mastodon isn't readily available now but legend has it that when mastodons were discovered frozen into glaciers the Romans had the meat brought to Rome for their feasts.
In elephants there are only two, the last milk-molar and the first true molar (or the third and fourth of the whole series), which are alike in the number of ridges; whereas in mastodons there are three such teeth, the last milk-molar and the first and second molars (or the third, fourth and fifth of the whole series).
Mastodons are found in almost all parts of the world.
The mode of succession of the teeth in the mastodons exhibits so many stages of the process by which the dentition of elephants has been derived from that of more ordinary mammals.
Mastodons have fewer ridges on their molar teeth than elephants; the ridges are also less elevated, wider apart, with a thicker enamel covering, and scarcely any cement filling the space between them.
Certain of the molar teeth of the middle of the series in both elephants and mastodons have the same number of principal ridges; those in front having fewer, and those behind a greater number.
In 1801 he undertook, largely at his own expense, the excavation of the skeletons of two mastodons in Ulster and Orange counties, New York, and in 1802 he established at Philadelphia Peale's Museum.
Thence both elephants and mastodons reached North America by the Bering Sea route; while the former, which arrived earlier than the latter, eventually penetrated into South America.
Mastodons, like elephants, always have a pair of upper tusks, while the earlier ones likewise have a short pair in the lower jaw, which is prolonged into a snout-like symphysis for their support.
These long-chinned mastodons must have had an extremely elongated muzzle, formed by the upper lip and nose above and the lower lip below, with which they were able to reach the ground, the neck being probably rather longer than in elephants.
As regards the elephants (now restricted to Africa and tropical Asia), there appears to be evidence that the ancestral mastodons, after having developed from African forms probably not very far removed from the Amblypoda, migrated into Asia, where they gave rise to the true elephants.