MASTODON OR MAMMOTH IN ALASKA?

 I’ve had this nagging feeling in the back of my mind that one of my recent HubPages was not right. This passage especially I was uncomfortable with:

“Almost as much fun as finding a very old peat moss pit that was frozen solid and as we thawed it out to get to the bedrock below it, it revealed a treasure trove of old bones and teeth. But the best part was the complete skeleton of a Mastodon with a complete set of tusks! We thawed that ice lens with what is known in the mining business as a “Giant”. A large water canon the washed the frozen ground away and revealed all the fossils and detritus as it melted.”

This quote was from my Hub called “PROSPECTING FOR GOLD IN ALASKA”. After further research and my own experiences I believe the complete skeleton, from tail to tusks, that we found was not a Mastodon but rather a Mammoth, a Wooly Mammoth to be exact.

On my many visits to the “La Brea Tar Pits” and museum in Los Angeles I had seen the complete skeletons of the Mastodons discovered in the Tar Pits. I always thought to myself that they were considerably smaller than the one we found in Alaska based entirely on the size of the molars (teeth) we found in Alaska and the ones I saw in L.A.. I had the molar and part of the lower jawbone of my Mastodon from the mine and it was 5 times the size of the one on the Mastodon in L.A. (my 1^st ex wife is now the proud owner of it). One interesting fact was the tooth was not a mineralized fosssil it still had the enamel on it, stains and all. This was a frozen tooth!

My research and personal experience has led me to the conclusion that what we found in the frozen peat moss was a Mammoth and most likely a wooly Mammoth being so far north.

These two animals were from the same extinct genus, Mammut, but were distinctly different. Their existence overlapped, the Mastodon, a browser like a moose,  around from 33.9 million years ago to about 11,000 years ago and the Mammoth a grazer like a cow, was around 4.8 million years ago to 4,500 years ago with some living to around 1650 BCE. Although they both resemble modern elephants the Mammoth is the closest relative.

The Mammoth was a grazer like the modern elephants and the teeth were the give away, The molars of the Mammoth are large and form a large flat grinding surface while those of the Mastodon are not nearly as large and have a pointed surface for browsing. Our teeth found in the peat were the larger grazing molars of the Mammoth.

So my earlier Hub “PROSPECTING FOR GOLD IN ALASKA” stands corrected with this footnote. Although everyone believed it was a Mastodon in reality it was a “WOOLY MAMMOTH”