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 32 mammoths and mastodons DHJanzen100694.jpg high resolution
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| While the mammoths were truly mammoth (upper right in this postcard from the La Brea tar pits gift shop), they were also animals of the north and open areas (praries, tundra, marshes and related) - they were heavily grass eaters. While they would undoubtedly have dispersed massive amounts of small seeds of the small plants that they swallowed (the foliage was the fruit), they did not live in forests of the kinds rich in the megafauna fruits being discussed in this lecture. In other words, the extinction of the mammoths probably had little impact on neotropical vegetation and population dynamics (the most southern mammoth remains are from Nicaragua). Mastodons, on the other hand, were a quite different matter. Mastodons should be thought of as North American forest elephants - smaller, more versatile, and feeding on shrubs, tree foliage, fruits, seeds and tubers - almost a gigantic pig. Undoubtedly a herding animal, imagine what a herd of mastodons (lower right in the postcard) would have done to an acorn crop. | ||
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