Our data establish that the Asian elephant is the closest living relative of the extinct mammoth in the nuclear genome, extending previous findings from mitochondrial DNA analyses. – The mastodons became extinct a little before the mammoth extinction.To elucidate the history of living and extinct elephantids, we generated 39,763 bp of aligned nuclear DNA sequence across 375 loci for African savanna elephant, African forest elephant, Asian elephant, the extinct American mastodon, and the woolly mammoth. – The head position compared to the rest of the body was very different between these two, as mammoths had a very high head position but it was almost the same as the backbone height in mastodons. – Mastodons were browsers, whereas mammoth were grazers. – Mastodon molars had conical processes, while mammoth molars did not have. However, the number of teeth throughout the lifetime was the same in both animals. – Mastodon had more teeth in the jaw at a time than the mammoth. – Both these proboscideans were enormous, but mammoth was larger than mastodon. However, the tusks in mastodons were shorter, slender, and less curved than the mammoths’. – Mammoth had longer and thicker tusks those curved dramatically. – Mammoth have a closer evolutionary relationship to the modern elephants than mastodons have. What is the difference between Mammoth and Mastodon? Their extinction has taken place a little before about 10,000 years ago, in the last ice age. Their head did not erect like in mammoths, but stayed low or very little above the backbone. The skull was large and flat in their stocky and robust skeleton. Mastodons were two to three metres tall, and the estimated weight is about eight tons. The maximum length recorded for the mastodon tusk is 2.5 metres. They had tusks, which were short, slender, and curved upwards a little. In fact, mastodon teeth suggest that they were browsers, as they had blunt, conical-like projections on their molars. Their appearance of the molar teeth differed from mammoths and modern elephants. According to fossil evidences, their evolutionary relationship to the modern elephants was not that close. They lived in Africa, Europe, Asia, and Americas. Mastodon was also a large mammal belonged to the extinct genus Mammut. However, these gigantic creatures became extinct before 10,000 years from today, but well-preserved specimens from Siberia have increased the interests among scientists to clone mammoths.
Their gestation periods have lasted for 22 months, which is the same as the modern elephants. Mammoths were grazers according to the analyses based on their molar shapes. They were also living in herds as the modern elephants, and those were female matriarchal herds. Their head was the highest point of the body, in fossils it almost looks like an erected and distinct skull. They were massive and largely built animals with an average estimated weight between five and ten tons. The length of their tusks was as same as their height, 3 – 5 metres tall. One of the most interesting feature of mammoths was their long tusks with a characteristic curve. Fossil evidences show their close relationship to the modern elephants. Mammoth was an enormously built mammal belonged to the extinct genus Mammuthus. Using the fossil records of mammoths and mastodons, scientists have discovered some significant differences between them, and this article aims to emphasize the most interesting of those findings. There are many differences to identify those two as what they really were. It is fairly a common mistake that many people would understand the enormous and prehistoric mammoth as the same animal as mastodon.
0 kommentar(er)
