Mastodons and Mammoths; The Giants of America
The hills from South Dakota were once heavily populated by the Columbian mammoths. The experts have stated that they were very similar to the elephants from Africa, the main difference being that they were way bigger than that.
An adult usually weighed about ten tons, which is the weight that a school bus has. Their teeth were huge, and they used them in order to collect the grass they consumed. They used to eat lots of it, more precisely 400 pounds of it each day. The Mammoth Site is the place where these ancient giants are celebrated and displayed in the proper manner. The site is located in Hot Springs, and there the people can find out many things about these creatures. Bones collected from 58 different mammoths are displayed at the Mammoth Site, and every time the visitors are amazed by them. Larry Agenbroad is one of the palaentologists who discovered the site, and he is sure that many more mammoths are still located somewhere underneath the site. The site is unique because it is one of the fewest in the world which presents the bones in the location where the mammoths gave their last breath.
He said that almost 30,000 years ago a sinkhole was formed in the area, and as a result vegetation grew there. The mammoths went to that place, but they got trapped and they lost their lives there. He said that there were places where the bones of the mammoths were arranged in a manner which clearly indicated the fact that they tried in vain to escape the trap. He said that there are many visitors who get emotional when they hear the sad stories of the mammoths. The people who work there are not so sensitive, and they have even come up with certain nicknames for the animals. A mammoth which does not have its skull has been nicknamed Marie Antoinette, as an allusion to her death. Another one has been nicknamed Napoleon Bone-apart, as his bones were spread very far one from the other. The Americans have managed to combine science with business and with entertainment, and they have proven to be very good at it.
The mammoths and mastodons are two very important species which belonged to the past, yet in most of the cases, they are considered to be less important than the dinosaurs, even though they have become extinct as well. Some say that the reason why the dinosaurs are more popular than the mammoths is the fact that they had a much more dramatic death, and that people are attracted to these types of stories. The mastodons and the mammoths are one of the first animals which have gone extinct, and that was a proof that such things can, and actually do happen. Agenbroad said that people often make the mistake of believing that the mammoths were present only in Europe, when in fact they were present in the United States of America as well. The first time when a clue about the existence of the mammoths on the American territory was discovered, was in 1705, in the Hudson River Valley village of Claverack, New York. A farmer found it, and he traded it for a glass of rum, not knowing that what he found was actually a mammoth tooth. The tooth was made present to the governor of New York of that time, Lord Cornbury, and he then sent the tooth to London.
The animal was later nicknamed “incognitum” because the species was unknown. Some say that this was the first “monster” of the United States of America, the original force which was the basis of many stories. Some said that the mammoth was 70 feet tall, and many other similar stories which presented it in an exaggerated manner were created. The next tooth was found in South Carolina, and many of the slaves who worked on plantations stated that the tooth looks a lot like the teeth of the elephants from Africa. The Americans started calling the “monsters” mammoths for the first time, when the first mammoth was discovered in Siberia, and when it officially received the name of woolly mammoth. It was later discovered that in the United States of America there were two different types of elephant-like creatures: the mammoths, and the mastodons. The difference was very difficult to notice, and the experts tried to observe it. They later reached to the conclusion that the main difference between the mammoths and the mastodons is in the tusks.
It was said that the “incognitum” used its task in order to hunt the prey, and it was considered to be a carnivore. Benjamin Franklin was the first one who stated that they could not have been carnivores because of their big tusks, which would have stopped them from hunting the prey. He said that the “incognitum” might have used its task in order to collect tree branches, and he was right, as this is what it primarily ate, whereas the mammoth consumed grass. Georges Cuvier, who was a French anatomist was the first one who gave the beast a name, and it called it mastodon, from the Greek mastos, which means “breast” and odont which means “tooth”. The researchers were wondering what might have happened with them, and for the first time they acknowledged the fact that the species might go extinct, and that they are not on this planet forever. This was another time when science went into conflict with religion, as in the Bible it was said that the animals are on the Earth forever, and that the Earth was 6,000 years old.
Cuvier stated that the Earth is much older than that, and that it must have experience lots of changes over its time, such as floods, earthquakes, and ice ages and so on. All of his theories were based on the discovery of the mammoths. The Americans were criticized for the fact that they dared to celebrate the discovery of the mammoth, and one of their biggest critics was Georges-Louis Leclerc, Comte de Buffon, who was a French naturalist. He stated that the animals from Europe are way more important than the ones from the United States of America, and for the most majority of the 18th century, the Europeans saw America in an inferior manner, because of its writings.
Thomas Jefferson would not have it, so he started to write a paper in which he compared the mammoth and the mastodons, with the animals of Europe, which Georges-Louis Leclerc praised so much. He made the comparison with the bears, bison, elk and flying squirrels, which he considered to be inferior to the mammoths. He was bothered by the fact that Buffon declared that some parts of the world are advantaged when it comes to the animals they “host”, saying that all the parts of the world have the same advantage, as all of them are heated by the same sun, and washed by the same rain. He went to Paris in 1784 in order to represent the United States of America, and he brought the skin of a panther with him, in order to show it to Buffon. He also brought the skin of a moose, which would have had the same purpose. Anthropologist Thomas C. Patterson, stated that the United States of America was bothered by the fact that its animals were considered inferior for numerous reasons. By admitting that, it would have admitted that it is inferior to other countries; especially the ones from Europe, and that would have resulted in a halt of the financial assistance from Europe.
There was one incident when a Frenchman kept on calling the Americans who were represented by Thomas Jefferson, and Benjamin Franklin amongst others, “shrimps”, and said that the nature has degenerated them. When he was confronted by Benjamin Franklin about it, he deiced to remain silent. The confrontation seemed a little bit too harsh, but the reality is that they would not take it from anybody, and that they would fight to protect what they believed in, and what they were. The artists Charles Willson Peale examined the bones of the mastodon as well, and to him, it was obvious that the claims made by Buffon were ridiculous, as it was clear that the American creature had a much bigger size than any European animal. Soon after the examination, a famer discovered the bones of a very large animal, and he went there in order to participate to the excavation, paying $2,500 for the experience. In the end it was discovered that the bones belonged to the same mammoth discovered year before. He took the bones home, he assembled them with the previous one, and he placed them in an exhibition. It is said that he exaggerated a lot with the exhibition, as he increased the size of the mammoth on purpose, by adding extra cartilages.
The skeleton of the mammoth was considered by many to be an American wonder, and it was the second time in history when the skeleton of an extinct species was put on back together. The first one was in Madrid, and it was successful; however the signs seemed to indicate that this one will be much more successful. The Americans were fascinated by the size of this “mammoth”, even if in reality it was a mastodon. Everybody was talking about the mammoth, and everyone was proud of it, and of the fact that it was located in their country. It seems that the bones played an important role in politics as well, as on numerous occasions they were displayed under the glass table where the politicians met. Peale then took the skeleton in Europe in order to display it there as well. It seemed that there were people who still believed in the existence of the mammoth, and one of those people was Thomas Jefferson. One of the reasons why he would not accept the fact that they were extinct was an old Indian legend. He was convinced that the mammoth was still somewhere out there on the great American fields.
He became president years later, and he sent two men in the West of the United States of America in order to look for the mammoth. It is said that one of the reasons he desperately wanted to find one, was because he was still bothered by the words issued by Buffon, who said that he would change them in his next book, but he never managed to do it because he died in the meantime. Jefferson was right about the fact that the American territory was very large, and that thanks to its huge size, numerous species might live there. The two people found the bones of the largest bear ever known, and it seemed that the mammoths were hunted by them, and by the wolves as well. They found the bones of a different animal in the area as well, and it was believed that the bones belonged to the large American lion, which was said that it was much larger than its African counterpart. They also found out the bones of a woolly mammoth, which was smaller than the Columbian mammoth, named so after the man who discovered America, Christopher Columbus. The digging in the area continued up to 1976, when the site was sold. Agenbroad said that the diggings allowed them to find out more about what happened with the mammoths back then. It was discovered that some of them were killed when the snow first came, as they could not resist to the extreme cold. They had two different options when it came to the food which they could consume. One of it involved the last year grass, and the other one involved the muss which was located at the top of the pit. The second choice was dangerous, but it seemed that males took that chance and as a result many of them died because of it.
