When talking about mammoth , I believe everyone is familiar with it. As the number one among ancient animals, mammoth is definitely the most famous one, but do you know it! In the long river of history, another prehistoric elephant that is extremely similar to a mammoth was born. He is our protagonist today, mastodon .
Mastodon is also known as shovel or slab dentate. It belongs to the family Mastodon family and is an extinct prehistoric animal. Mastodon looks very similar to mammoths from the outside, and also has curved tusks, and they all belong to proboscis mammals. You should know that primitive proboscises generally first appeared in Africa. After a long journey to the whole world, Mastodon is no exception.
The ancient mastodon went out of Africa after the initial phase evolution. According to the materials unearthed from fossils, they appeared in Asia, Europe and North America one after another. The entire race spanned a relatively long time, from the new style to the new style, thus evolving various body shapes.
Let us understand the basic data of mastodon. Mastodon in adulthood can reach three meters in height, which is equivalent to the height of one floor, weighs more than four tons, which is similar to the weight of a modern African elephant. With such a huge body size, even if animals achieve it, they have to take a detour.
But compared with the eldest mammoth, it is still slightly inferior. Among the unearthed fossils, scientists found that the largest mastodon could compare with the medium-sized mammoth, but it was far less weighted. The preliminary guess is that mammoths store a large amount of fat in their bodies and have higher bone density than mastodons.
In addition, in terms of family classification, the two are also different. Mammoth belongs to Mammoth family, while mammoths belong to Elephant family , but the difference between tooths and mammoths is far more than that. The biggest difference is their ivory. The ivory in the mouth of Mammoth is ridge-shaped, somewhat similar to the teeth of a carved beast. The firm and thick ivory is widely used. Whether it is chewing on leaves or exploring the bushes, it seems easy to do it.
This also creates the diversification of mastodon food, including plant rhizomes, berries and leaves. Because of its huge size and no natural enemies, humans have dominated the ancient land of America before they entered the American continent, and lasted for 3.7 million years.
Until 15,000 years ago, nature finally launched an unprecedented test for mastodon. The northern hemisphere 15,000 years ago ushered in an extremely cold climate, and the North American plains were the first to be affected. The low temperature climate changed the living environment of the bamboo water town, and the large number of plants died, which made the elephant herds hungry and cold, and the survival of the entire ethnic group was even more difficult.
If the climate change has allowed the mastodon to walk half of his foot into the gate of extinction, then the appearance of natural enemies is to completely extinct the mastodon.
That's right, it's the emergence of human beings. Some intelligent humans traveled thousands of miles from Africa to America. They hunted the already endangered mastodon, and then polished the huge ivory into a spear to use it. Eight thousand years ago, the last mastodon fell under the human spear, and the mastodon completely went extinction.
Time comes April 24, 2008, paleontologists discovered a large number of paleontological fossils in Xiakou Town, Qingtongxia City, China, within ten square meters of the sand mining market. This included mastodon fossils, and confirmed that it was a branch of mastodon that traveled far away to Africa. Unfortunately, the northern foot of the mastodon fossils that were discovered for the first time in Niushou Mountain are hilly areas. Due to the impact and compression of the formation, many precious fossils have turned into powder, and only some larger fossils survived.
includes the leg bones, ribs and teeth fossils of mastodon. To this day, mastodon can only appear in front of us in the form of fossils. He has also appeared alive in front of mankind, but mankind chose to become the murderer of the extinction of mastodon.
Today, human scientists have to spend thousands of times more time and energy studying mastodon. Perhaps this is a kind of compensation for mastodons by humans.
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