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{{Short description|Genus of mammals (fossil)}}
{{Automatic taxobox
| name = Mammut
| taxon = Mammut
| fossil_range = {{fossilrange|Late Miocene | Holocene}}
| image = Mammut americanum.jpg
| image_caption = Mounted ''M. americanum'' skeleton, [[American Museum of Natural History]]
| authority = [[Johann Friedrich Blumenbach|Blumenbach]], 1799
| type_species = {{extinct}}''Elephas americanus'' <br>(= †'''''Mammut americanum''''')
| type_species_authority = [[Robert Kerr (writer)|Kerr]], 1792
| subdivision_ranks = Other species
| subdivision = {{species list
| {{extinct}}'''''M. matthewi'''''|[[Henry Fairfield Osborn|Osborn]], 1921
| {{extinct}}'''''M. vexillarius'''''|[[William Diller Matthew|Matthew]], 1930
| {{extinct}}'''''M. raki'''''|[[Childs Frick|Frick]], 1933
| {{extinct}}'''''M. nevadanum'''''|[[Chester Stock|Stock]], 1936
| {{extinct}}'''''M. cosoensis'''''|[[Leonard Peter Schultz|Schultz]], 1937
| {{extinct}}'''''M. furlongi?'''''|Shotwell & Russell, 1963
| {{extinct}}'''''M. pacificum'''''|Dooley et al., 2019
}}
{{collapsible list|bullets = true
|title=<small>Species pending reassessment</small>
| {{extinct}}'''''[["Mammut" borsoni|M. borsoni]]''''' <small>[[Isaac Hays|Hays]], 1834</small>
| {{extinct}}'''''M. obliquelophus''''' <small>Mucha, 1980</small>
}}
| synonyms = {{collapsible list|bullets = true|title=<small>Genus synonymy</small>
| ''Harpagmotherium'' {{small|[[Gotthelf Fischer von Waldheim|Fischer von Waldheim]], 1808}}
| ''Mastotherium'' {{small|Fischer von Waldheim, 1814}}
| ''Mastodon'' {{small|[[Georges Cuvier|Cuvier]], 1817}}
| ''Tetracaulodon'' {{small|[[John Davidson Godman|Godman]], 1830}}
| ''Missourium'' {{small|[[Albert C. Koch|Koch]], 1840}}
| ''Leviathan'' {{small|Koch, 1841}}
| ''Pliomastodon'' {{small|Osborn, 1926}}
}}
{{collapsible list|bullets = true
|title=<small>Synonyms of ''M. americanum''</small>
| ''Elephas americanus'' {{small|Kerr, 1792}}
| ''Mammut ohioticum'' {{small|Blumenbach, 1799}}
| ''Elephas macrocephalus'' {{small|Camper, 1802}}
| ''Harpagmotherium canadense'' {{small|Fischer de Waldheim, 1808}}
| ''Elephas mastodontus'' {{small|[[Benjamin Smith Barton|Barton]], 1810}}
| ''Mastotherium megalodon'' {{small|Fischer de Waldheim, 1814}}
| ''Tapirus mastodontoides'' {{small|[[Richard Harlan|Harlan]], 1825}}
| ''Tetracaulodon mastodontoideum'' {{small|Godman, 1830}}
| ''Mastodon ohioticum'' {{small|[[Karl Eichwald|Eichwald]], 1832}}
| ''Mastodon cuvieri'' {{small|Hays, 1834}}
| ''Mastodon jeffersoni'' {{small|Hays, 1834}}
| ''Tetracaulodon collinsii'' {{small|Hays, 1834}}
| ''Tetracaulodon godmani'' {{small|Hays, 1834}}
| ''Tetracaulodon tapyroides'' {{small|Hays, 1834}}
| ''Elephas ohioticus'' {{small|[[Henri Marie Ducrotay de Blainville|de Blainville]], 1839–1864}}
| ''Missourium kochii'' {{small|Koch, 1840}}
| ''Leviathan missourii'' {{small|Koch, 1840}}
| ''Tetracaulodon osagii'' {{small|Koch, 1841}}
| ''Tetracaulodon kochii'' {{small|Koch, 1841}}
| ''Tetracaulodon bucklandii'' {{small|Grant, 1842}}
| ''Missourium theristocaulodon'' {{small|Koch, 1843}}
| ''Mastodon rugatum'' {{small|Koch, 1845}}
| ''Elephas rupertianus'' {{small|[[John Richardson (naturalist)|Richardson]], 1854}}
| ''Trilophodon ohioticus'' {{small|[[Hugh Falconer|Falconer]], 1868}}
| ''Mammut progenium'' {{small|[[Oliver P. Hay|Hay]], 1914}}
| ''Mastodon americanus plicatus'' {{small|Osborn, 1926}}
| ''Mammut francisi'' {{small|Hay, 1926}}
| ''Mammut oregonense'' {{small|Hay, 1926}}
| ''Mastodon moodiei'' {{small|[[Erwin Hinckley Barbour|Barbour]], 1931}}
| ''Mastodon americanus alaskensis'' {{small|Frick, 1933}}
| ''Mastodon acutidens'' {{small|Osborn, 1936}}
}}
{{collapsible list|bullets = true
|title=<small>Synonyms of ''M. matthewi''</small>
| ''Pliomastodon sellardsi'' {{small|[[George Gaylord Simpson|Simpson]], 1930}}
| ''Pliomastodon adamsi'' {{small|[[Claude W. Hibbard|Hibbard]], 1944}}
}}
{{collapsible list|bullets = true
|title=<small>Synonyms of ''M. vexillarius''</small>
| ''Pliomastodon vexillarius'' {{small|Matthew, 1930}}
}}
{{collapsible list|bullets = true
|title=<small>Synonyms of ''M. raki''</small>
| ''Mastodon raki'' {{small|Frick, 1933}}
}}
{{collapsible list|bullets = true
|title=<small>Synonyms of ''M. nevadanum''</small>
| ''Pliomastodon nevadanus'' {{small|Stock, 1936}}
}}
{{collapsible list|bullets = true
|title=<small>Synonyms of ''M. cosoensis''</small>
| ''Pliomastodon cosoensis'' {{small|Schultz, 1937}}
}}
{{collapsible list|bullets = true
|title=<small>Synonyms of "''M.''" ''borsoni''</small>
| ''Mastodon vellavus'' {{small|[[Auguste Aymard|Aymard]], 1847}}
| ''Mastodon vialleti'' {{small|Aymard, 1847}}
| ''Mastodon buffonis'' {{small|[[Auguste Pomel|Pomel]], 1848}}
| ''Mastodon affinis'' {{small|Pomel, 1859}}
| ''Zygolophodon borsoni'' {{small|Osborn, 1926}}
}}
{{collapsible list|bullets = true
|title=<small>Synonyms of "''M.''" ''obliquelophus''</small>
| ''M. praetypicum?'' {{small|Schlesinger, 1917}}
}}
}}
Source Tracking.:
Kerr 1792: https://www.biodiversitylibrary.org/item/119041#page/170/mode/1up
Cuvier 1806: https://www.biodiversitylibrary.org/item/93165#page/58/mode/1up
Blumenbach (1799): https://www.deutschestextarchiv.de/book/view/blumenbach_naturgeschichte_1799?p=722
Cuvier (1817): https://www.biodiversitylibrary.org/item/18030#page/275/mode/1up
Cuvier (1818): https://www.biodiversitylibrary.org/item/75704#page/28/mode/1up
Lydekker (1886): https://www.biodiversitylibrary.org/item/125734#page/45/mode/1up
Hay (1902): https://www.biodiversitylibrary.org/item/59973#page/713/mode/1up
Kunz (1916): https://books.google.com/books?id=CyRAAAAAYAAJ&pg=PA491&lpg=PA491&dq=%22mammut%22+%22missourium%22+%22mastodon%22+%221817%22+%22cuvier%22&source=bl&ots=hp2cKQ-6YU&sig=ACfU3U0iYP5A8cpOAzll3_Ef4MOf4AL_uA&hl=en&sa=X&ved=2ahUKEwjq2_3cge-CAxVOlYkEHbEuBeg4FBDoAXoECAMQAw
Simpson (1942): https://www.jstor.org/stable/pdf/985085.pdf?refreqid=fastly-default%3A414c4b9332427292728f302cf3143d95&ab_segments=&origin=&initiator=&acceptTC=1
Simpson (1945): https://books.google.com/books?id=28TPAAAAMAAJ&q=mammut#v=snippet&q=mammut&f=false
Geissert (1982): https://www.zobodat.at/pdf/Mitt-Bad-Landesver-Natkde-Natschutz-Freiburg_NF_13_0001-0007.pdf
Secondary Source History (1987): https://www.jstor.org/stable/pdf/1305142.pdf?refreqid=fastly-default%3Aa0b5b6ccec30d7454e23ccba5ab99770&ab_segments=&origin=&initiator=&acceptTC=1
Secondary Source 2: https://books.google.com/books?hl=en&lr=&id=XKdMYER-FpwC&oi=fnd&pg=PA133&dq=%22mammut%22+%22synonym%22+%22pliomastodon%22&ots=P6vB-IKOY1&sig=WK7a8KQUDlJ1l-dr98EMnlULnDY#v=onepage&q=%22mammut%22%20%22synonym%22%20%22pliomastodon%22&f=false
Secondary Source 3 (Etymology): https://archives.datapages.com/data/nogs/data/005/005012/0036.htm
Secondary Source 4: https://www.vertpala.ac.cn/EN/10.19615/j.cnki.2096-9899.210728
Secondary Source 5 (1852): https://www.biodiversitylibrary.org/item/126175#page/11/mode/1up
== Research history ==
=== "Giant's" teeth and bones finds ===
[[File:Em - Mammut americanum - 9.jpg|thumb|left|''Mammut americanum'' [[molar (tooth)|molar]] tooth, [[Rotunda Museum]]]]
The earliest account of known fossils of ''Mammut'' dates back to July 30, 1705 when ''[[The Boston News-Letter]]'' described an account, dating to July 23, 1705 in [[New York (state)|New York]], of teeth and a bone of a "[[giant]]" uncovered from the town of [[Claverack, New York]]. The newspaper stated that it was large-sized, weighed over {{cvt|4|lb}}, and was dug up some {{cvt|30|ft}} to {{cvt|40|ft}} underground from a river bank or hill. It also reported that they uncovered a [[femur]] (reported as a "thigh bone") and another flat, broad tooth with a length equivalent to four fingers of a human, but both crumbled shortly after being uncovered before they could be observed by anatomical experts. According to [[Louisiana State University]] professor Donald E. Stanford in 1959, the news brought great excitement to some people of the time as they saw it as potentially proving the existence of [[antediluvian]] giants as chronicled by the [[Bible]].<ref name="warren">{{cite book|last=Warren|first=John Collin|year=1852|title=The Mastodon giganteus of North America|section=Historical sketch|publisher=John Wilson and Son|pages=1–3|url=https://www.biodiversitylibrary.org/item/126175#page/20/mode/1up}}</ref><ref name="stanford">{{cite journal|last=Stanford|first=Donald E.|year=1959|title=The Giant Bones of Claverack, New York, 1705|journal=New York History|volume=40|number=1|pages=47–61|url=https://www.jstor.org/stable/23153528}}</ref>
Further details regarding the history of the tooth from 1705 were provided in a letter dated to 1713 (although likely written earlier) when [[Edward Hyde, 3rd Earl of Clarendon]] (known also as Lord Cornbury), communicated his report from New York to the [[Royal Society]], a [[learned society]] of [[Great Britain]]. In his subjoined letter, Lord Cornbury wrote that he sent them the "tooth of a Giant" from a [[Virginia]] fleet, desiring that it be sent to [[Gresham College]]. According to the English aristocrat, the tooth was found near the side of the [[Hudson River]] by a [[Dutch people|Dutch]] country-fellow and was sold to [[New York General Assembly]] member Van Bruggen for a [[gill (unit)|gill]] of rum. Bruggen showed the tooth to several other people, including Lord Cornbury, and was originally going to dispose of it due to its perceived worthlessness. However, he instead gave it to Lord Cornbury, who speculated that it may have a tooth of a giant as opposed to a beast or fish. He then stated that he sent Johannis Abeel, a recorder of [[Albany, New York]], to dig near the original site of the tooth to find more bones. A later letter by Abeel reveals that he traveled to Claverack where the original bones were found. He said that workers uncovered bones of a corpse that was about thirty feet long but that almost all decayed, as most broke into pieces as soon as they were handled.<ref name="stanford"/><ref>{{cite book|last=Weld|first=Charles Richard|year=1848|title=A History of the Royal Society: With Memoirs of the Presidents|chapter=Chapter XV: 1710–25|pages=398–433|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=5CUEAAAAQAAJ&printsec=frontcover#v=onepage}}</ref> Author Paul Semonin said that the accounts written by Cornbury and Abeel match up with that written by the correspondent of ''The Boston News-Letter''.<ref name="monster">{{cite book|last=Semonin|first=Paul|year=2000|title=American Monster: How the Nation's First Prehistoric Creature Became a Symbol of National Identity|chapter=Chapter 1: The Giant of Claverack in Puritan America|publisher=NYU Press|pages=15–40}}</ref>
In a diary entry by [[Edward Taylor]] dating to the summer of 1706, the writer wrote that a Dutchman named Koon brought to his house a fist-sized tooth different from that in Claverack that weighed over {{cvt|2|lb}}. Semonin suggested based on known primary sources that the Dutchmen from Albany were traveling around the American colonies with their items, later visiting [[Massachusetts]] governor [[Joseph Dudley]] in July of 1706 to show him the tooth.<ref name="monster"/> In a letter to his friend [[Cotton Mather]], he wrote about his experience with the two Dutchmen and reaffirmed his opinion that the tooth belonged to the biblical giants.<ref name="stanford"/>
Cotton Mather used the accounts from ''The Boston News-Letter'' and the letter from Dudley to communicate about the large bones and teeth to the English naturalist [[John Woodward (naturalist)|John Woodward]] in an account dating to November 17, 1712, which were referenced in the ''[[Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society]]'' journal in 1714. In it, he reinforced the theory that the teeth and bones belonged to antediluvian giants that were apparently once present in the [[New England]] region.<ref>{{cite journal|last=Mather|first=Cotton|year=1714|title=IV. An extract of several letters from Cotton Mather, D. D. to John Woodward, M. D. and Richard Waller, Esq; S. R. Secr|journal=Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society|volume=29|pages=62–71|url=https://www.biodiversitylibrary.org/item/196060#page/72/mode/1up}}</ref><ref name="stanford"/>
=== Big Bone Lick fossils ===
[[File:Proboscidean femurs 1764.png|thumb|Engravings of the femurs of an unspecified extant elephant species (top), ''M. americanum'' (middle), and a "Siberian" mammoth (bottom), 1764]]
According to Semonin, England's naturalists shifted away from the idea that the large fossils were of humanoids, an idea created by the advent of a discoveries of preserved Siberian [[mammoth]]s and subsequent comparative anatomies to extant [[elephant]]s.<ref name="monster2">{{cite book|last=Semonin|first=Paul|year=2000|title=American Monster: How the Nation's First Prehistoric Creature Became a Symbol of National Identity|chapter=Chapter 3: The Mystery of the Siberian Mammoth|publisher=NYU Press|pages=62–83}}</ref> In addition, a [[mammoth]] tooth recovered from [[South Carolina]] in 1724 or 1725 was described by [[Mark Catesby]] in a journal dating to 1743 as identified by North American slaves from Africa as belonging to an elephant, marking a shift away from identifications of fossils as belonging to human giants.<ref name="monster3">{{cite book|last=Semonin|first=Paul|year=2000|title=American Monster: How the Nation's First Prehistoric Creature Became a Symbol of National Identity|chapter=Chapter 4: Big Bone Lick|publisher=NYU Press|pages=84–110}}</ref><ref name="beginnings">{{cite journal|last=Simpson|first=George Gaylord|year=1942|title=The Beginnings of Vertebrate Paleontology in North America|journal=Proceedings of the American Philosophical Society|volume=86|number=1|pages=130–188|url=https://www.jstor.org/stable/985085}}</ref><ref>{{cite book|last=Dean|first=Patrick|year=2023|title=Nature's Messenger: Mark Catesby and His Adventures in a New World|chapter=Chapter 8: Slave Gardens and Medicines|publisher=Pegasus Books}}</ref>
In 1739, a French military expedition under the command of [[Charles III Le Moyne]] (known also as "Longueil") explored the locality of "[[Big Bone Lick State Park|Big Bone Lick]]" in what is now [[Kentucky]], an area previously known by Native Americans. Le Moyne gathered an assortment of fossil bones and teeth from the locality.<ref>{{cite journal|last=Storrs|first=Glenn W.|year=2019|title=Big Bone Lick|journal=Ohio Valley History|volume=19|number=3|pages=82–90|url=https://muse.jhu.edu/article/734797}}</ref> The discovery of the locality by Le Moyne’s military was part of a military campaign against the [[Chickasaw]] nation as part of the [[Chickasaw Wars]] in the 18th century. Upon his return to France in 1740, Le Moyne deposited a large femur, a tusk, and three molars in a collection of the [[Cabinet du Roi]] in the French [[botanical garden]] [[Jardin des plantes]]. The erroneous date of 1729 instead of 1739 as the year that Le Moyne uncovered fossils was the result of a rewritten note for a map of eastern North America that listed the wrong year. A different account by French officer [[Jean Bernard Bossu]] recorded that in 1735, his Canadian military party recovered several skeletons of "elephants" from the site, leading him to believe that the proboscideans may have wandered off from Asia to North America.<ref name="hedeen">{{cite book|last=Hedeen|first=Stanley|year=2008|title=Big Bone Lick: The Cradle of American Paleontology|chapter=Chapter 4: Gathering the Bones|publisher=University Press of Kentucky|pages=31–44}}</ref>
In 1762, French naturalist [[Louis Jean-Marie Daubenton]] reported that he examined the fossil collection brought by Longueuil from the Big Bone Lick and compared it with a Siberian femur and bones of extant elephants. Daubenton said that the bones were discovered by Native Americans (probably [[Abenaki]] hunter-warriors) who found them on an marsh's edges and took them to Longueuil's camp in [[Ohio]] territory as a gift. He came to the conclusion that the femur and tusk belonged to an elephant while the three molars were unlike those of true elephants and therefore came from a separate giant [[hippopotamus]].<ref>{{cite journal|last=Daubenton|first=Louis Jean-Marie|year=1764|title=Mémoire sur des os et des dents remarquables par leur gradeur|journal=Histoire de l'Academie Royale des Sciences, Année MDCCLXII, avec les Mémoires de Mathématiques & de Physique, pour la même année, 1762|pages=206–229|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=rT1RAAAAYAAJ&pg=RA1-PA206&lpg=RA1-PA206#v=onepage&q&f=false}}</ref><ref name="hedeen"/><ref>{{cite journal|last=Barnett|first=Lydia|year=2019|title=Showing and hiding: The flickering visibility of earth workers in the archives of earth science|journal=History of Science|volume=58|issue=3|doi=10.1177/0073275319874982}}</ref> Today, the molars are identified as belonging to ''M. americanum''.<ref>{{cite journal|last1=Tassy|first1=Pascal|last2=Göhlich|first2=Ursula B.|year=2011|title=Retour sur la série type de Gomphotherium angustidens (Proboscidea, Mammalia): de Daubenton à Cuvier, et après|journal=Estudios Geológicos|volume=67|number=2|pages=321–332|doi=10.3989/egeol.40539.191}}</ref>
[[File:Mammut molar 1767.png|thumb|left|''M. americanum'' molar illustration as provided in 1767]]
The same year, several Native Americans of the [[Shawnee]] tribe brought a large tooth and a tusk to [[Henry Bouquet]] presumably as a gift to tie with British authorities after a long time of hostility due to the [[French and Indian War]]. Bouquet wrote to [[John Bartram]] about the large fossils, believing that elephants had formerly existed in North America. Bartram contacted [[Quaker]] naturalist James Wright about the tooth and tusk fossils at [[Fort Pitt (Pennsylvania)|Fort Pitt]]. Using an interpreter, Wright learned from two Shawnee individuals that there were five entire skeletons of mammutids lying with their heads pointing towards one another. They believed that the five proboscideans were all killed by a lightning strike. When Wright asked them if they had ever seen them alive, the Shawnee interviewees responded that nobody had ever seen the creatures alive due to the bones having been observed as ancient. In Shawnee tradition, the mammals roamed in herds and were hunted by giants, who both eventually died out. The accounts told by the Shawnee individuals in 1762 are the oldest known documented interpretations of the Ohio fossils, although the traditions may have had been told for generations based on careful fossil observations.<ref name="monster3"/><ref>{{cite book|last=Mayor|first=Adrienne|year=2005|title=Fossil Legends of the First Americans|chapter=Chapter 1: The Northeast: Giants, Great Bears, and Grandfather of the Buffalo|publisher=Princeton University Press|pages=32–72}}</ref>
[[File:Elephant Mammut incognitum jaws.png|thumb|Jaws of an extant elephant in different views (left) compared to the jaws of ''Mammut'' (right)]]
The prospects of the Big Bone Lick also attracted Irish trader [[George Croghan]], who collected some bones on his journey down Ohio before then being attacked by a group of [[Kickapoo people|Kickapoo]] and [[Mascouten]] members, resulting in several people on Croghan’s party being killed and Croghan being captured. He was eventually released, although he lost his fossil collection in the process. He later recollected enough fossils to send to both [[William Petty, 2nd Earl of Shelburne]] (or Lord Shelburne) and [[Benjamin Franklin]] in 1767.<ref name="legacy1">{{cite book|last=Thomson|first=Keith Stewart|year=2008|title=The Legacy of the Mastodon|chapter=Chapter 2: Big Bone Lick|publisher=Yale University Press|pages=10–23}}</ref> Croghan was thanked by both Franklin and his friend [[Peter Collinson (botanist)|Peter Collinson]] the same year for the fossils, leading them to question why so many proboscidean fossils were preserved in the Big Bone Lick site and how they were apparently present in North America in the first place. Collinson in one of his scholarly papers concluded that the peculiar grinders (the molars) were built for herbivorous diets of branches of trees and shrubs as well as other vegetation, a view later followed by Franklin.<ref>{{cite thesis|last=Daiutolo, Jr.|first=Robert|year=2015|title=George Croghan: The Life of a Conqueror|publisher=Rutgers University–New Brunswick: School of Graduate Studies|url=https://rucore.libraries.rutgers.edu/rutgers-lib/48442/PDF/1/play/}}</ref><ref>{{cite journal|last=Collinson|first=Peter|year=1767|title=XLVII. Sequel to the foregoing Account of the large Fossil Teeth|journal=Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society of London|volume=57|url=https://www.biodiversitylibrary.org/item/208064#page/534/mode/1up}}</ref>
Scottish anatomist [[William Hunter (anatomist)|William Hunter]] described fossils of the mammutid from the Midwestern locality in 1768, recalling that French naturalists thought of the bones as belonging to elephants. Hunter agreed that the tusks were like those of elephants, but he and his brother [[John Hunter (surgeon)|John Hunter]] observed that the teeth were not like those of modern elephants. He determined that the "grinders" from Ohio were of a carnivorous animal but believed that the tusks belonged to the same animal. After examining fossils from Franklin and Lord Shelburne, Hunter was convinced that the "''pseudo-elephant''", or "''animal incognitum''" (shortened as "''incognitum''"), was an animal species separate from elephants that might have also been the same as the proboscideans found in Siberia. He concluded his article with the opinion that although regrettable to philosophers, humanity should be thankful heaven that the animal, if truly carnivorous, was extinct.<ref>{{cite journal|last=Hunter|first=William|year=1768|title=V. Observations on the bones, commonly supposed to be elephants bones, which have been found near the river Ohio in America|journal=Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society of London|volume=58|pages=34–45|url=https://www.biodiversitylibrary.org/item/207945#page/60/mode/1up}}</ref> Semonin argued that Hunter's usage of the word "extinct" for the fossil animal was controversial, as it pushed the ideas that the extinction of the "carnivorous" animal was a blessing for the human race and that wild animals and "inferior" human races were subject to extinctions over "superior" human races under the will of God's creation.<ref name="monster4">{{cite book|last=Semonin|first=Paul|year=2000|title=American Monster: How the Nation's First Prehistoric Creature Became a Symbol of National Identity|chapter=Chapter 6: The Anatomy of a Carnivore|publisher=NYU Press|pages=136–161}}</ref><ref name="beginnings">{{cite journal|last=Simpson|first=George Gaylord|year=1942|title=The Beginnings of Vertebrate Paleontology in North America|journal=Proceedings of the American Philosophical Society|volume=86|number=1|pages=130–188|url=https://www.jstor.org/stable/985085}}</ref>
=== Early American observations ===
{{multiple image
| align = right
| image1= Buffon 1707-1788.jpg
| image2= T Jefferson by Charles Willson Peale 1791 2.jpg
| total_width = 300
| total_height= 300
| footer = [[Georges-Louis Leclerc, Comte de Buffon]] (left) proposed the 18th-century theory that faunas of North America were subject to "[[social degeneration]]," or reductions in sizes, an idea that was opposed by [[Thomas Jefferson]] (right)
}}
For much of the 18th century, the theory of [[social degeneration]], an idea envisioned by [[Georges-Louis Leclerc, Comte de Buffon]] in which the New World continents, because of the cold climates and humidity, caused living humans and other animals to degrade in size. The idea also pushed concepts of evolution of species and extinction, making it controversial at the time. A tooth of the "''incognitum''" from Ohio that was sent to Buffon by Collinson in 1767 may have challenged Buffon's perception of degeneracy, as Buffon previously mostly ignored fossil evidence from North America. Semonin defined the events as setting up a basis for [[American nationalism]], since American degeneracy was seen as an offensive concept by Anglo-American naturalists.<ref name="monster5">{{cite book|last=Semonin|first=Paul|year=2000|title=American Monster: How the Nation's First Prehistoric Creature Became a Symbol of National Identity|chapter=Chapter 5: The American ''Incognitum'' in Paris|publisher=NYU Press|pages=111–135}}</ref>
Fossils of ''Mammut'' from the Big Bone Lick locality were regularly collected by merchants from [[Philadelphia]], [[Pennsylvania]] and Native American traders, who sold the remains to American connoisseurs and European scientific communities. At least a few were collected by upper class Americans with interest in natural history.<ref name="monster6">{{cite book|last=Semonin|first=Paul|year=2000|title=American Monster: How the Nation's First Prehistoric Creature Became a Symbol of National Identity|chapter=Chapter 7: The "Monstrous Grinders" in the American Revolution|publisher=NYU Press|pages=162–185}}</ref>
In December of 1785, Reverend Robert Annan wrote an account recalling an event in which workers discovered bones in his farm near the Hudson River in New York in fall of 1780. The workers found four molars in addition to another that was broken and thrown away. They also uncovered bones, including vertebrae that broke shortly after. Annan expressed his confusion at what the animal could be but speculated based on its "grinders" that it was carnivorous in diet. He speculated also that it was probably extinct due to some catastrophe within the globe. The reverend also noted that [[George Washington]] visited his house to see the remains, the [[American Revolutionary War]] general informing him that he had a molar from Ohio. The account was eventually published in 1793.<ref>{{cite journal|last=Annan|first=Robert|year=1793|title=Account of a Skeleton of a Large Animal, found near Hudson's River|journal=Memoirs of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences|volume=2|number=1|pages=160–164}}</ref> Washington's visit to Annan's house to view the fossils meant news to other people in the New England region, a US colonel named [[David Humphreys (soldier)|David Humphreys]] informing [[Yale University]] president [[Ezra Stiles]] that Washington kept fossil teeth from Ohio that resembled those at Annan's farm.<ref name="monster6"/>
American statesman [[Thomas Jefferson]] wrote his ''[[Notes on the State of Virginia]]'' the same time that the fossils from Annan's farm were described, eventually having it published in 1785.<ref name="monster6"/> Referring to the fossil proboscideans of North America as "mammoths" and mentioning that Native Americans called them "big buffaloes," Jefferson stated his thoughts that they may have been carnivorous, still exist in the northern parts of North America, and are related to mammoths whose remains were found in Siberia. Jefferson expressed his opinion that the "grinders" did not belong to hippopotamuses for the reason that no skeletal remains of them had ever been found in North America. The statesman was also cautious of the idea that elephants and mammoths were the same animals. Jefferson referenced Buffon's theory of American degeneracy, countering it by using extant and extinct animal measurements, including those of "mammoths," as proof that North America faunas were not "degenerative" in size.<ref>{{cite book|last=Jefferson|first=Thomas|year=1785|title=Notes on the State of Virginia|publisher=Philippe Denis Pierres|pages=42–url=https://books.google.com/books?id=DTWttRSMtbYC&printsec=frontcover#v=onepage&q&f=false}}</ref>
=== Early taxonomic history ===
In the 1790s, the "''American incognitum''" was subject to research by multiple taxonomists. Scottish writer [[Robert Kerr (writer)|Robert Kerr]] erected the species name ''Elephas americanus'' in 1792 based on fossil tusks and "grinders" from the Big Bone Lick locality. He stated that the tusks were similar to elephants while the molars were completely different because they were covered with enamel and had a double row of high conical [[cusp (anatomy)|cusp]] processes. Kerr expressed being unsure about the taxonomic affinities of the molars while referencing that [[Thomas Pennant]] supposed that they belong to an unknown species within the genus ''[[Elephas]]'', giving the common name "American elephant."<ref>{{cite book|last=Kerr|first=Robert|year=1792|title=The animal kingdom, or zoological system, of the celebrated Sir Charles Linnæus. containing a complete systematic description, arrangement, and nomenclature, of all the known species and varieties of the mammalia, or animals which give suck to their young Class I Mammalia|publisher=Edinburgh|pages=115–117|url=https://www.biodiversitylibrary.org/item/119041#page/169/mode/1up}}</ref>
German naturalist [[Johann Friedrich Blumenbach]] also followed up with more taxonomic descriptions of fossil proboscideans in 1799. The first fossil species, recovered from Germany, was described as belonging to the newly erected species ''Elephas primigenius''? (now known as ''[[Mammuthus primigenius]]''). The second was what he considered to be an unknown "colossal land monster of the prehistoric world," considering it to be the "mammoth." He created the genus ''Mammut'' and erected the species ''Mammut ohioticum'' based on fossil bones dug up from Ohio in North America. He said that the species was distinguished from other animals of the prehistoric world based on the unusual shapes of the large molars. The genus name "Mammut" refers to the German translation for "mammoth."<ref>{{cite book|last=Blumenbach|first=Johann Friedrich|year=1799|title=Handbuch der Naturgeschichte [6. ed.]|publisher=Göttingen|pages=695–698|url=https://www.deutschestextarchiv.de/book/view/blumenbach_naturgeschichte_1799?p=719}}</ref>
French naturalist [[Georges Cuvier]] also described known fossil proboscidean species back in 1796, although his account was later published in 1799. He considered that the remains uncovered from Siberia were true "mammoths" that had similar dentitions to extant elephants but had some morphological differences. He mentioned the fossil remains that were brought back by Longueil from Ohio back in 1739 and several researchers from previous decades who noted the unusual molars and thought that they belonged to different animals like hippopotamuses. He followed recognition in the previously established species "''Elephas americanus''" and argued that the species was different from elephants and mammoths and cannot be found amongst living animals due to extinction from [[catastrophism]].<ref>{{cite journal|last=Cuvier|first=Georges|year=1799|title=Mémoire sur les espèces d'éléphans vivantes et fossiles|journal=Mémoires de l'Institut des Sciences et Arts|pages=1–22|url=https://www.biodiversitylibrary.org/page/16303001#page/175/mode/1up}}</ref><ref name="arctic">{{cite journal|last=Froese|first=Duane|year=2014|title=The curious case of the Arctic mastodons|journal=Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences|volume=111|number=52|pages=18405–18406|doi=10.1073/pnas.1422018112}}</ref>
The proboscidean species was subject to several other species names given by other taxonomists within the earliest 18th century, such as the genus name ''Harpagmotherium'' by the Russian naturalist [[Gotthelf Fischer von Waldheim]] in 1808.<ref name="osborn">{{cite book|last=Osborn|first=Harry Fairfield|year=1936|title=Proboscidea: a monograph of the discovery, evolution, migration and extinction of the mastodonts and elephants of the world|volume=1|publisher=J. Pierpont Morgan Fund by the trustees of the American Museum of Natural History|url=https://www.biodiversitylibrary.org/item/44913#page/1/mode/1up}}</ref>
=== Peale's complete skeleton exhibition ===
[[File:C W Peale - The Exhumation of the Mastadon.jpeg|thumb|The 1806–1808 painting ''The Exhumation of the Mastadon'' by [[Charles Willson Peale]]]]
American painter [[Charles Willson Peale]] worked with ''Mammut'' fossils as early as 1783 when he was commissioned by the German physician [[Christian Friedrich Michaelis]] to draw the mammutid fossils in the collection belonging to American physician [[John Morgan (physician)|John Morgan]].<ref>{{cite journal|last=Sellers|first=Charles Coleman|year=1969|title=Charles Willson Peale with Patron and Populace. A Supplement to "Portraits and Miniatures by Charles Willson Peale". With a Survey of His Work in Other Genres|journal=Transactions of the American Philosophical Society|volume=59|number=3|pages=1–146|url=https://www.jstor.org/stable/pdf/1006131.pdf?refreqid=fastly-default%3A5f016195744a7b84f81e7c4fdaf7ffb9&ab_segments=&origin=&initiator=&acceptTC=1}}</ref> He also opened his own natural history museum in Philadelphia in 1786, but it was not until the 19th century that it became significant to the paleontological history of ''Mammut''. In June of 1801, he visited [[Newburgh (town), New York|Newburgh]], New York to view skeletal remains found on a farm belonging to John Masten.<ref name="peale">{{cite journal|last=Zygmont|first=Brian J.|year=2015|title=Charles Willson Peale’s ''The Exhumation of the Mastodon'' and the Great Chain of Being: The Interaction of Religion, Science, and Art in Early-Federal America|journal=Text Matters|volume=5|number=5|pages=95–111|doi=10.1515/texmat-2015-0008}}</ref> The skeletal remains began to be uncovered as early as 1799 when workers found an approximately {{cvt|18|in}} long thighbone while digging a [[marl]] pit at the farm locality. A crowd of about one hundred people gathered to view the skeletal discoveries, including local physician and later fossil locality supervisor James G. Graham. Although many of the specimens were broken in the process, they were part of the first known complete skeleton of ''Mammut''. Initially, Masten refused to sell the fossils in order to wait for all skeletal remains to be dug up.<ref name="monster7">{{cite book|last=Semonin|first=Paul|year=2000|title=American Monster: How the Nation's First Prehistoric Creature Became a Symbol of National Identity|chapter=Chapter 13: Exhumation of the Monster|publisher=NYU Press|pages=315–340}}</ref>
Peale at first asked Masten for permission to sketch the skeletal remains, but he later purchased full ownership of the fossils from Masten for $300 ($200 for the already excavated bones and $100 for additional excavations for fossils on his estate). Shortly after exhibiting his large-scale drawings of the fossils to the [[American Philosophical Society]] (APS) in Philadelphia, he asked the circle's vice president Robert Patterson for inquiry regarding a loan to complete excavation at Masten's farm. The APS's members unanimously voted to provide Peale $500 for his endeavors on July 24, 1801. To unearth the second skeleton in what is now the [[Peale's Barber Farm Mastodon Exhumation Site]], they used a mill-like device to drain a {{cvt|12|ft}} deep marl pit. Although the endeavors were almost threatened by a thunderstorm and potential flood, the storm passed, allowing for completion of the excavations. Peale thought that the event involving the excavation of the fossils were worth portraying as an artwork, producing a painting now called ''The Exhumation of the Mastodon'' in 1806-1808.<ref name="peale"/> The excavations themselves costed nearly $2,000 due to the hirings of workers and the construction of the wheel.<ref name="incognitum">{{cite book|editor-last1=Verhoeven|editor-first1=W.M.|editor-last2=Kautz|editor-first2=Beth Dolan|last=Gribbin|first=Laura|year=1999|title=Revolutions and Watersheds: Transatlantic Dialogues, 1775-1815|chapter=Thomas Jefferson, Charles Willson Peale, and ''The Great American Incognitum''|publisher=Rodopi|pages=103–120}}</ref>
[[File:Mastodon HLMD.jpg|thumb|left|''Mammut'' skeleton previously displayed by Charles Peale at his museum, now on display at [[Hessisches Landesmuseum Darmstadt]]]]
Charles Peale returned to assemble a complete skeleton of ''Mammut'' from September of 1801 up until December of the same year, when on December 4, he formally announced that he was preparing to display the assembled skeleton for the month. On December 24, Peale invited members of the American Philosophical Society to view the displayed skeleton, and its exhibit was opened to the public the next day on December 25. While admission to the museum costed 25 cents, admission to the "Skeleton of the Mammoth" exhibit costed an additional 50 cents. The exhibit was viewable to the public for six nights a week since Peale installed lamps there. Peale was able to repay his debts to the American Philosophical Society thanks to the profits of the exhibit.<ref name="peale"/> The exhibit earned Peale profits of around $3,000 between 1803 and 1807.<ref name="incognitum"/> The exhibition, featuring the first complete skeleton of ''Mammut'' (known also as "Peale's Mastodon"), was a huge success that attracted thousands of visitors to Peale's museum, the skeleton becoming famous and a US national symbol.<ref>{{cite journal|last=Hoffman|first=Sheila K.|year=2018|title=The Origins of Puritan Politics in US Museums: Nation Building and “The Arts” from 1776 to 1806|journal=ICOFOM Study Series|volume=46|pages=131–145|doi=10.4000/iss.1025}}</ref>
Charles Peale entrusted the job of promotion of the articulated skeleton to his son [[Rembrandt Peale]], who took it with him on his tour to Europe. There, it was used for promotions of the fossil proboscidean and for Jefferson's final rebuttals against Buffon's arguments for supposed inferiority of American faunas. Author Keith Stewart Thomson argued that the promotion of the "mastodon" skeleton made it a symbol of the strength of American nationalism and that "mammoth" as a term became associated with gigantism.<ref name="peale2">{{cite book|last=Thomson|first=Keith Stewart|year=2008|title=The Legacy of the Mastodon|chapter=Chapter 6: Fossils and Show Business: Mr. Peale’s Mastodon|publisher=Yale University Press|pages=46–54}}</ref>
Although Jefferson shifted towards the view that the "mammoth" of North America was a browser, Charles Peale and Rembrandt Peale both thought of it as being carnivorous in contrast to elephants. After his return from Europe, Rembrandt Peale decided to curve the tusks of the articulated skeleton down, justifying in 1803 that the tusks would have been used in rooting up shellfish from the ground or climbing up river banks and lakes. It was not until 1826 that [[John Davidson Godman]] restored the upward positions of the tusks of the skeleton, using Cuvier's observations of "''Mastodon''" to argue that no evidence points towards downward-curving tusks.<ref name="peale2"/><ref>{{cite book|last=Peale|first=Rembrandt|year=1803|title=An historical disquisition on the mammoth: or, great American incognitum, an extinct, immense, carnivorous animal, whose fossil remains have been found in North America|publisher=E. Lawrence|url=https://www.biodiversitylibrary.org/item/133378#page/1/mode/1up}}</ref>
As a result of the museum's bankruptcy, the first skeleton's specimens were sold to some German spectators in around 1848, who failed to sell them to French king [[Louis Philippe I]], the [[British Museum]], and the [[Royal College of Surgeons of England]]. It was temporarily displayed in [[London]] but was eventually sold to [[Hessisches Landesmuseum Darmstadt]] in Germany where it is now displayed. The second skeleton's specimens landed eventually at the [[American Museum of Natural History]].<ref name="peale2"/>
=== Cuvier's proboscidean reevaluations ===
[[File:Mammut Mastodonte Skeleton Cuvier 1806.png|thumb|Sketch of the skeleton of ''Mammut'', labeled as "Mastodonte"]]
In 1806, Cuvier wrote multiple extended research articles on fossil proboscideans of Eurasia and the Americas. He stated that the bones that Buffon previously described from North America were not of elephants but another animal that he referred to as the "''mastodonte''," or the "''animal of Ohio''." He also made reference to the molars from mammoths previously identified by Catesby and the African slaves and said that the bones of the "''mastodons''" were much more common in North America than those of "elephants."<ref>{{cite journal|last=Cuvier|first=Georges|year=1806|title=Sur les éléphans vivans et fossiles|journal=Annales du Muséum d'histoire naturelle|volume=8|pages=1–68}}</ref> He also reported about fossil bones of proboscideans that German naturalist [[Alexander von Humboldt]] uncovered from what is now [[Colombia]]. Humboldt reported back in 1803 that he sent a collection of the fossil bones similar African elephants and the Ohio proboscidean to Cuvier. Cuvier wrote that more thorough examinations revealed to him that the fossils belonged to a different species of "mastodon."<ref>{{cite journal|last=Cuvier|first=Georges|year=1806|title=Comparaison des mâchelières de l'éléphant des Indes et de l'éléphant d'Afrique, et premier caractère distinctif de ces deux espèces. Exarien des diverses mâchhelières fossiles d'éléphant.|journal=Annales du Muséum d'histoire naturelle|volume=8|pages=120–130}}</ref><ref>{{cite journal|last=von Humboldt|first=Alexander|year=1803|title=Extrait de plusieurs lettres de M. A. de Humboldt|journal=Annales du Muséum national d'histoire naturelle|volume=2|pages=322–337|url=https://www.biodiversitylibrary.org/item/23265#page/391/mode/1up}}</ref>
Cuvier reinforced the idea that the extinct "mastodon" was an animal close in relationship to elephants that differed by jaws with large tubercles. He also said that it was improperly referred to by English and American people as "mammoths." He also said that it was the largest of all fossil animals, especially with the large-sized molars for which there are no modern analogues. The French naturalist emphasized that the Siberian mammoths were historically confused with American "mammoths" by other naturalists despite not being the same. As a result, he suggested that "mammoth" and "carnivorous elephant" be discontinued as names for the species and that it receive a new genus name instead. Cuvier said that for "''mastodonte''," he derived the name's etymology (compound {{lang|grc|μαστός}} ({{translit|grc|mastós}}, "breast") + {{lang|grc|ὀδούς}} ({{translit|grc|odoús}}, "tooth") from [[Ancient Greek]] to mean "nipple tooth," since he thought that it expressed the characteristic form of the teeth. He also made an account of the history of the mammutid based on prior scientific literature, mentioning the early 18th-century teeth, the Big Bone Lick locality, and Peale's skeletons. Cuvier also described fossils from Europe that he said belonged to "mastodons." He also noted that the molars were different in form from elephants by the rectangular and narrow shapes and presences of furrows, making them more similar to those of hippopotamuses and pigs.<ref>{{cite journal|last=Cuvier|first=Georges|year=1806|title=Sur le grand mastodonte|journal=Annales du Muséum d'histoire naturelle|volume=2|pages=270–312|url=https://www.biodiversitylibrary.org/item/51185#page/312/mode/1up}}</ref>
In another article, he defined there being multiple "mastodon" species based on locality and size, such as an "Ohio mastodon," a "narrow-toothed mastodon" of [[Simorre]] in France, a "small-toothed mastodon" from [[Mont Blanc]] near the Italian city of [[Bologna]], and two species of the Americas listed as "mastodon of the Cordilières" and the small-sized "''Mastodonte humboldien''."<ref>{{cite journal|last=Cuvier|first=Georges|year=1806|title=Sur différentes dents du genre des mastodontes, Mais d'espèces moindres que celles de l'Oxro, trouvées en plusieurs lieux des deux continens|journal=Annales du Muséum d'histoire naturelle|volume=2|pages=401–424|url=https://www.biodiversitylibrary.org/item/51185#page/477/mode/1up}}</ref>
=== Cuvier's taxonomy ===
In 1817, the French naturalist officially established the genus name ''Mastodon'', reaffirming that it is extinct and has left no living descendants. He established that it had an overall body form similar to elephants but had molars more similar to hippopotamuses and pigs that did not serve to grind meat. The first species he erected within ''Mastodon'' was ''Mastodon giganteum'', giving it the informal name "great mastodon" and writing that that it is designated to the Ohio proboscidean with abundant fossil evidence, equal size but greater proportions to modern elephants, and diamond-shaped points of the molars. The naturalist also created the second species name ''Mastodon angustidens'' and gave it the informal name "narrow-toothed mastodon," diagnosing it as having narrower molars, smaller sizes compared to ''M. giganteum'', and range distributions in Europe and South America.<ref name="cuvier1">{{cite book|last=Cuvier|first=Georges|year=1817|title=Le règne animal distribué d'après son organisation : pour servir de base a l'histoire naturelle des animaux et d'introduction a l'anatomie comparée|chapter=Sixié ordre des mammiféres. Les pachydermes|publisher=Chez Déterville|pages=227–245|url=https://www.biodiversitylibrary.org/item/18030#page/269/mode/1up}}</ref>
In 1824, after reviewing known "mastodon" fossils from Europe, Cuvier wrote that he recognized six species of the genus ''Mastodon'': the "great mastodon" (''M. maximus''), "narrow-toothed mastodon" (''M. angustidens''), "mastodon of the Cordelières" (''M. andium''), "little mastodon" (''M. minutus''), and "tapiroid mastodon" (''M. tapiroïdes).<ref name="cuvier2">{{cite book|last=Cuvier|first=Georges|year=1824|title=Recherches sur les ossemens fossiles, où l'on rétablit les caractères de plusieurs animaux dont les révolutions du globe ont détruit les espèces|section=Rèsumè gènèral: Des Animaux dont les caractères ont ètè indiquès ou rectifiès, ou dont l'Ostèologie a ètè dècrite dans cet ouvrage|volume=5|publisher=G. Dufour and E. d'Ocagne|pages=527–536|url=https://www.biodiversitylibrary.org/item/214698#page/535/mode/1up}}</ref>
Apparently unbeknownst to Cuvier, in 1814, Fischer von Waldheim designated the genus ''Mastotherium'' as a genus name to the "mastodons" Cuvier recognized back in 1806. He gave the species ''Mastotherium megalodon'' for the "Ohio mastodon," ''M. leptodon'' for the "narrow-toothed mastodon," ''M. microdon'' for the "small-toothed mastodon," ''M. hyodon'' for the "Cordelières mastodon," and ''M. Humboldtii'' for the "little mastodon."<ref>{{cite book|last=Fischer von Waldheim|first=Gotthelf|year=1814|title=Zoognosia Tabulis synopticis illustrata|publisher=Typis Nicolai Sergeidis Vsevolozsky|url=https://books.google.com/books?hl=en&lr=&id=r3o-AAAAcAAJ&oi=fnd&pg=PA3&dq=mastotherium+megalodon&ots=tYX9_Pa1ir&sig=QeiYQiSTBN2KijPrCNMQPYM-268#v=onepage&q=mastotherium&f=false}}</ref> In addition, Swiss naturalist [[Heinrich Rudolf Schinz]] described proboscidean fossil remains and named the species ''Mastodon turicense'' in 1824 before Cuvier named it ''M. tapiroides'' the same year.<ref>{{cite book|last=Schinz|first=Heinrich Rudolf|year=1824|title=Naturgeschichte und Abbildungen der Säugethiere|publisher=Zürich: Brodtmanns Lithographische Kunstanstalt|url=https://www.biodiversitylibrary.org/item/325325#page/278/mode/1up}}</ref><ref>{{cite journal|last=Markov|first=Georgi N.|year=2004|title=The fossil proboscideans of Bulgaria and the importance of some Bulgarian finds – a brief review|journal=Historia naturalis bulgarica|volume=16|pages=139–150|url=https://www.nmnhs.com/historia-naturalis-bulgarica/pdfs/000274000162004.pdf}}</ref>
Despite Cuvier's given genus name being a junior synonym of multiple prior-named genus names, ''Mastodon'' (sometimes emended to ''Mastodonte''<ref>{{cite book|last=Lartet|first=Édouard|year=1836|title=Notice sur la colline de Sansan, suivie d'une récapitulation des diverses espèces d'animaux vertébrés fossiles, trouvés soit à Sansan, soit dans d'autres gisements du terrain tertiaire miocène dans le bassin sous-Pyrénéen|publisher=J.-A. Portes|language=French|pages=217–220|url=https://www.biodiversitylibrary.org/item/229851#page/323/mode/1up}}</ref>), became the most commonly used genus name for the 19th century.<ref name="mammut">{{cite book|last=Perry Hay|first=Oliver|year=1902|title=Bibliography and catalogue of the fossil vertebrata of North America|publisher=Washington Government Printing Office|pages=707–712|url=https://www.biodiversitylibrary.org/item/59973#page/713/mode/1up}}</ref><ref name="osborn"/> It also saw usage as a common name in the United States by the 19th century.<ref name="man">{{cite book|last=MacLean|first=John Patterson|year=1878|title=Mastodon, Mammoth, and Man|publisher=Williamson & Cantwell Publishing Co.|url=https://www.biodiversitylibrary.org/item/48926#page/7/mode/1up}}</ref>
=== European wastebasket history ===
[[File:Anancus arvernensis.JPG|thumb|Most fossil proboscidean species described in the 19th century, such as ''[[Anancus]] arvernensis'' (pictured), were classified to the genus ''Mastodon'']]
"''Mastodon''" was riddled with major taxonomic problems since proboscidean species whose dentitions matched neither [[elephantid]]s nor [[deinotheres]] were regularly classified to the genus, effectively making it a [[wastebasket taxon]]. In its early taxonomic history, species now determined as belonging to other proboscidean genera were classified to ''Mastodon'' on the basis of similar dentitions to that of "''Mastodon giganteum''" (= ''Mammut americanum'').<ref name="cuvier1"/><ref name="cuvier2"/><ref>{{cite journal|last1=Mazo|first1=A.V.|last2=van der Made|first2=Jan|year=2012|title=Iberian mastodonts: Geographic and stratigraphic distribution|journal=Quaternary International|volume=255|pages=239–256|doi=10.1016/j.quaint.2011.07.047}}</ref> Various fossil proboscidean species from Europe and Asia were classified into ''Mastodon'' in the 19th century before eventually being reclassified into distinct genera.<ref name="osborn"/>
In 1828, British naturalist [[William Clift]] wrote about newly erected species collected by [[John Crawfurd]] from Southeast Asia. He determined that the species belonged to the genus ''Mastodon'' on the basis of similar dentitions to those of ''M. giganteum'' and ''M. angustidens'', giving the species names ''M. latidens'' and ''M. elephantoides''.<ref name="clift">{{cite journal|last=Clift|first=William|year=1828|title=On the Fossil Remains of two New Species of Mastodon, and of other vertebrated Animals, found on the left Bank of the Iraweldi|journal=Transactions of the Geological Society of London|series=2|volume=2|pages=369–375|url=https://www.biodiversitylibrary.org/item/111778#page/389/mode/1up}}</ref> The same year, French naturalists [[Jean-Baptiste Croizet]] and [[A. Jobert]] erected another species ''Mastodon arvernensis'', naming it after the French region [[Auvergne]] and giving it the common name "Auvergne mastodon."<ref>{{cite book|last1=Croizet|first1=Jean=Baptiste|last2=Jobert|first2=A.|year=1828|title=Recherches sur les ossements fossiles du département du Puy-de-Dôme|publisher=Chez les principaux libraires|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=AsI0NrLhCZwC&printsec=frontcover#v=onepage&q&f=false}}</ref>
In 1832, German naturalist [[Johann Jakob Kaup]] established the species ''Tetracaulodon longirostre'',<ref>{{cite journal|last=Kaup|first=Johann Jakob|year=1832|title=Ueber zwei Fragmente eines Unterkiefers von Mastodon angustidens Cuv., nach welchen diese Art in die Gattung Tetracaulodon Godmann gehört|journal=Isis|pages=628–631|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=-WNEAAAAcAAJ&pg=PA627#v=onepage&q&f=false}}</ref> which later was reclassified as ''Mastodon longirostris''.<ref name="sivalensis">{{cite book|last1=Falconer|first1=Hugh|last2=Cautley|first2=Proby Thomas|year=1846|title=Fauna antiqua sivalensis, being the fossil zoology of the Sewalik Hills, in the north of India|publisher=Smith, Elder and Co|url=https://www.biodiversitylibrary.org/item/124939#page/7/mode/1up}}</ref> In 1834, American naturalist [[Isaac Hays]] established that the proboscidean teeth from [[Piedmont]], Italy, attributed by Italian naturalist [[Stefano Borson]] to ''Mastodon giganteum'', belonged to a different species based on dental morphology. He determined that it may have belonged to a different species, giving from Borson the name ''Mastodon borsoni''.<ref name="hays">{{cite journal|last=Hays|first=Isaac|year=1834|title=Descriptions of the specimens of inferior maxillary bones of mastodons in the cabinet of the American Philosophical Society, with remarks on the genus Tetracaulodon (Godman)|journal=Transactions of the American Philosophical Society|volume=4|pages=317–339|url=https://www.biodiversitylibrary.org/item/79816#page/375/mode/1up}}</ref> The English naturalist [[Proby Cautley]] erected an additional species ''M. Sivalensis'' in 1836 based on the proportions of a tooth from the [[Siwalik Hills]].<ref>{{cite journal|last=Cautley|first=Proby|year=1836|title=Note on the teeth of the Mastodon à dents etroites of the Siwàlik Hills|journal=The Journal of the Asiatic Society of Bengal|pages=294–296|url=https://www.biodiversitylibrary.org/item/114404#page/346/mode/1up}}</ref>
Several genera were erected for European "''Mastodon''" species, but most 19th century naturalists did not recognize them as distinct. In 1836, German zoologist [[Hermann Burmeister]] established the genus ''[[Gomphotherium]]'', diagnosing it as an extinct proboscidean with tusks in both jaws, but he did not specify any species that belonged to the genus.<ref>{{cite book|last=Burmeister|first=Hermann|year=1836|title=Handbuch der Naturgeschichte. Zum Gebrauch bei vorlesungen|publisher=Theodor Johann Christian Friedrich Enslin|url=https://www.biodiversitylibrary.org/item/179277#page/843/mode/1up}}</ref> Apparently unaware of the prior genus name, Falconer and Cautley established the subgenus name ''Trilophodon'' in 1846 for some species of ''Mastodon''. In the same journal in 1847, the species previously referred to ''Mastodon'' by Clift were transferred to ''Elephas'' by Falconer and Cautley, who also erected the subgenus name ''[[Stegodon]]''. They also established that the teeth assigned to a "''M. minutus''" were really just teeth of a young ''M. angustidens'', effectively making the former a synonym. Falconer and Cautley also wrote that remains attributed by Cuvier to "''M. Humboldtii''" can instead be assigned to the other species ''M. Andium'', turning the former species into a synonym.<ref name="sivalensis"/> In 1855, [[Auguste Aymard]] created the genus name ''[[Anancus]]'' for the species ''A. macroplus'',<ref>{{cite journal|last=Aymard|first=Auguste|year=1855|title=Notice géologique sur le cratère de Coupet et sur son gisement de gemmes et d'ossements fossiles|journal=Annales de la Societé d'Agriculture, Sciences, Arts et Commerce du Puy|volume=19|pages=497–517|url=https://www.biodiversitylibrary.org/item/24190#page/505/mode/1up}}</ref> which was synonymized by French paleontologist [[Édouard Lartet]] with ''M. arvernensis'' in 1859.<ref>{{cite journal|last=Lartet|first=Édouard|year=1859|title=Sur la dentition des proboscidiens fossiles(Dinothérium, Mastodontes et Eléphants) et sur la distribution géographique et stratigraphique de leurs débris en Europe|journal=Bulletin de la Société géologique de France|series=2|volume=16|pages=469–515|url=https://www.biodiversitylibrary.org/item/239295#page/501/mode/1up}}</ref> In 1857, Falconer erected the subgenus ''[[Tetralophodon]]'' for the species ''M. arvernensis'', ''M. longirostris'', and ''M. sivalensis''.<ref>{{cite journal|last=Falconer|first=Hugh|year=1857|title=On the species of mastodon and elephant ocurring in the fossil state in Great Britain Part 1. Mastodon.|journal=Quarterly Journal of the geological Society of London|volume=13|pages=307–360|url=https://www.biodiversitylibrary.org/item/109614#page/489/mode/1up}}</ref>
In 1844, British naturalist [[Richard Owen]] established an Australian species ''M. australis'' based on an inland molar that seemed to resemble those of typical "''Mastodon''" species rather than other large marsupials like ''[[Diprotodon]]'' or ''[[Nototherium]]''.<ref>{{cite journal|last=Owen|first=Richard|year=1844|title=Description of a Fossil Molar Tooth of a ''Mastodon'' discovered by Count Strzlecki in Australia|journal=The Annals and Magazine of Natural History |volume=14|issue=91|page=268–271|url=https://www.biodiversitylibrary.org/item/71833#page/282/mode/1up}}</ref> Along with "''Notelephas australis''" in 1882, it is possible that proboscidean remains may have been transported by ocean into the Australian mainland, but this explanation fails to explain why the "''M. australis''" molar, now lost, was found inland. As a result, "''M. australis''" and "''N. australis''" remain unresolved enigmas.<ref>{{cite book|editor-last=Ebach|editor-first=Malte C.|last=Beck|first=Robin M.|year=2016|title=Handbook of Australasian Biogeography|chapter=The biogeographical history of non-marine mammaliaforms in the Sahul region|url=https://www.researchgate.net/publication/282009283_The_biogeographical_history_of_non-marine_mammaliaforms_in_the_Sahul_region}}</ref>
In 1856, French paleontologists [[Jean Albert Gaudry]] and Lartet erected an Asian species ''M. pentelicus''.<ref>{{cite journal|last1=Gaudry|first1=Jean Albert|last2=Lartet|first2=Édouard|year=1856|title=Résultats des recherches paléontologiques entreprises dans l’Attique sous les auspices de l’Académie|journal=Comptes Rendus de l’Académie des Sciences de Paris|volume=43|pages=271–274|url=https://www.biodiversitylibrary.org/item/16553#page/283/mode/1up}}</ref> German paleontologist [[Johann Andreas Wagner]] established another proboscidean species ''M. atticus'' in 1857.<ref>{{cite journal|last=Wagner|first=Johann Andreas|year=1857|title=neue Beiträge zur Kenntniss der fossilen Säugethierüberreste von Pikermi|journal=Zeitschrift für die gesammten Naturwissenschaft|volume=10|pages=534–536|url=https://www.biodiversitylibrary.org/item/97829#page/548/mode/1up}}</ref> Lartet later erected another European proboscidean species ''M. pyrenaicus'' in 1859.<ref>{{cite journal|last1=Lartet|first1=Édouard|year=1859|title=Sur la dentition des Proboscidiens fossiles et sur la distribution géographique et stratigraphique de leurs débris en Europe|journal=Bulletin de la Société géologique de France|series=2|volume=16|pages=469–515|url=https://www.biodiversitylibrary.org/item/239295#page/501/mode/1up}}</ref> Falconer established the name ''Mastodon pandionis'' in 1868 based on fossil molars from India.<ref>{{cite book|last=Falconer|first=Hugh|year=1868|title=Palæontological Memoirs and Notes of the Late Hugh Falconer: Fauna Antiqua Sivalensis|section=Mastodon (Triloph.) Pandionis. Description by Dr. Falconer of Fossil Molars from the Deccan, presented by Colonel Sykes to the India House Collection|publisher=R. Hardwicke|pages=124–126|url=https://www.biodiversitylibrary.org/item/104175#page/220/mode/1up|isbn=112-0-015839}}</ref>
In 1877, Michael Vacek pointed out that certain proboscideans had "zygolophodont" dentitions as opposed to more "bunolophodont" dentitions. Establishing differences in dental morphologies for European species, he classified some species like ''M. tapiroides'' into the ''[[Zygolophodon]]'' subgenus and other species like ''M. angustidens'' into the ''Bunolophodon'' subgenus.<ref>{{cite journal|last=Michael|first=Vacek|year=1877|title=Ueber österreichische Mastodonten und ihre Beziehungen zu den Mastodon-Arten Europa's|journal=Abhandlungen der Kaiserlich-Königlichen Geologischen Reichsanstalt|volume=7|pages=1–47|url=https://www.biodiversitylibrary.org/item/120876#page/331/mode/1up}}</ref>
Many Eurasian proboscidean species remained classified to the genus ''Mastodon'' for the rest of the 19th century while the other genus names like ''Trilophodon'', ''Tetralophodon'', and ''Anancus'' were considered synonyms of ''Mastodon'' by [[Richard Lydekker]] in 1886. He also established another species ''M. cautleyi'' the same year. Lydekker also recognized that ''M. turiciensis'' took taxonomic priority over ''M. tapiroides''.<ref name="lydekker">{{cite book|last=Lydekker|first=Richard|year=1886|title=Catalogue of the fossil Mammalia in the British museum, (Natural History): Part IV. Containing the Order Ungulata, Suborder Proboscidea|publisher=Order of the Trustees, London|url=https://www.biodiversitylibrary.org/item/125734#page/44/mode/1up}}</ref>
French paleontologist [[René Fourtau]] erected two proboscidean species from [[Wadi Moghara]], Egypt named ''M. spenceri'' and ''M. angustidens var. libyca'' in 1918–1920.<ref>{{cite book|last=Fourtau|first=René|year=1920|title=Contribution a l'Étude Vertébrés Miocènes de l'Égypte|publisher=Government Press, Cairo|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=y29aAAAAYAAJ&printsec=frontcover#v=onepage&q&f=false}}</ref><ref name="libyca">{{cite journal|last1=Sanders|first1=William J.|last2=Miller|first2=Ellen R.|year=2002|title=New proboscideans from the early Miocene of Wadi Moghara, Egypt|journal=Journal of Vertebrate Paleontology|volume=22|issue=2|pages=388–404|doi=10.1671/0272-4634(2002)022[0388:NPFTEM]2.0.CO;2}}</ref>
=== Early American taxonomic history ===
[[File:Skeleton Missouri Leviathan Drawing.jpg|thumb|left|Colored [[lithograph]] of the "''Missourium''" (= ''Mammut'') skeleton, ca. 1845]]
Throughout the 19th century, the proboscidean taxon was plagued with major taxonomic issues in North America. Many species names erected based on ''M. americanum'' remains were erected. As a result, ''M. americanum'' has many synonymous names. The issue of synonymous species names were especially apparent in the first half of the 19th century.<ref name="osborn"/>
In 1830, American naturalist [[John Davidson Godman]] created the genus ''Tetracaulodon'' plus its species ''T. Mastodontoideum'' based on what he determined to be differences between it and ''Mastodon'' based on the skull and dentition.<ref>{{cite journal|last=Godman|first=John Davidson|year=1830|title=Description of a New Genus and New Species of Extinct Mammiferous Quadruped|journal=Transactions of the American Philosophical Society|volume=3|url=https://www.biodiversitylibrary.org/page/24785763#page/532/mode/1up}}</ref> Both [[Richard Harlan]] and [[William Cooper (conchologist)|William Cooper]] pointed out that except for the tusks, all other characteristics of the specimens were consistent with ''M. giganteum''. They therefore argued that there was no reason to assume that the tusks were not just individual variations, a view followed also by [[George William Featherstonhaugh]]. Isaac Hays comparatively defended Godman's taxon, which led to a bitter debate regarding the validity of the genus amongst American naturalists.<ref name="tetracaulodon">{{cite journal|last=Gerstner|first=Patsy A.|year=1970|title=Vertebrate Paleontology, an Early Nineteenth-Century Transatlantic Science|journal=Journal of the History of Biology|volume=3|number=1|pages=137–148|url=https://www.jstor.org/stable/4330534}}</ref>
The history of showman [[Albert C. Koch]] and ''Mammut'' fossils began as early as the summer of 1838 when he learned from an informant Mr. Wash that a farmer near the [[Bourbeuse River]] in [[Missouri]] attempted to obtain suitable supplies by improving his spring but accidentally came across a few large-sized bones. The locality of the site as discussed by Koch is not well-known in the modern day. Upon seeing the bones in October, he lamented that the bones began to break and deteriorate. He decided to excavate the site, coming across what he thought was a "kill site" of ancient Native Americans having burned a proboscidean. He speculated that the hunters may have had also hurled stones at it to kill it. Possibly, Koch may have also thought that the animal was carnivorous. The showman also found associated associated remains of stone arrowheads and [[tomahawk]]s, leading him to believe that the extinct proboscideans and Native Americans coexisted with each other for some time.<ref name="koch">{{cite journal|last=McMillan|first=R. Bruce|year=2022|title=Albert C. Koch's Missourium and the debate over the contemporaneity of humans and the Pleistocene megafauna of North America|journal=Earth Sciences History|volume=41|issue=2|pages=410–439|doi=10.17704/1944-6187-41.2.410}}</ref>
Koch's claim that humans and extinct proboscideans were contemporaneous generated controversy amongst other researchers for the next couple of decades. The Native American artifacts were eventually deposited to the [[Natural History Museum, Berlin]], and future studies revealed that the Missouri locality where the artifacts and fossils were found was not an instance of human-extinct megafaunal coexistence. Two explanations for the objects being found at the same locality but not indicating coexistence were Native Americans throwing objects into springs to appease who they believed were residential spirits that sink into ground levels with the fossils and the artifacts themselves being younger than the fossils with ages dating back to the [[Archaic period (North America)]].<ref name="koch"/>
[[File:Em - Mammut americanum - 3.jpg|thumb|''M. americanum'' skeleton, [[British Museum of Natural History]]. The skeleton was initially assembled by [[Albert C. Koch]] as "''Missourium''" or "''Leviathan''", both now synonymous with ''Mammut''.]]
Koch announced in the November 12, 1838 edition of the ''Daily Commercial Bulletin'' newspaper for St. Louis that he found "mammoth" (''M. americanum'') fossils from the Bourbeuse River.<ref name="koch"/> The next summer in 1839, he traveled a few miles south of [[St. Louis]], Missouri to a salt spring site named [[Sulphur Springs, Missouri|Sulphur Springs]]. The site today is known as Kimmswick and is preserved as the [[Mastodon State Historic Site]]. After arriving at the site, he conducted excavations on land belonging to Captain Palmer & Company. He collected mostly fossils belonging to ''M. americanum'' and classified one skull as belonging to the newly erected genus plus species ''Missourium kochii'', naming it in honor of the state of Missouri.<ref name="koch2">{{cite journal|last=McMillan|first=R. Bruce|year=2010|title=The Discovery of Fossil Vertebrates on Missouri's Western Frontier|journal=Earth Sciences History|volume=29|issue=1|pages=26–51|doi=10.17704/eshi.29.1.j034662534721751}}</ref><ref name="osborn"/> In his 1840 report, he hypothesized that ''Missourium'' was much larger than an elephant, had horizontal tusks plus trunks, and occupied aquatic habitats. He also said that he recovered fossils of ''Mastodon'' from the same locality.<ref name="koch"/>
The showman later learned about additional fossils recovered from a spring on the [[Pomme de Terre River (Missouri)|Pomme de Terre River]] in western Missouri by a farmer's laborer. Koch traveled to the site and soon was given permission to dig up the fossils in a three-month project in 1840. He acquired fossils of what he believed were of the "''Missourium''" or "''Missouri Leviathan''" (named by 1841) and believed still that it inhabited water banks as proven by the fossils' positions.<ref name="koch"/> Koch had enough fossils to assemble a mounted skeleton of the "''Missouri Leviathan''" and briefly exhibited it at St. Louis. He sold his museum and took the "''Missourium''" skeleton on a nationwide tour to cities of [[New Orleans]], [[Louisville]], and Philadelphia before going to Europe to exhibit it in [[London]], Great Britain and in [[Dublin]], Ireland. During the exhibition in Philadelphia, [[Paul Beck Goddard]] and Harlan determined that the bones actually simply belonged to ''Mastodon giganteus''. In November of 1843, he sold the skeleton to the [[British Museum of Natural History]] for £1,300, where it was properly reassembled by Owen and resides in the museum to the modern day.<ref name="koch2"/> Whether Koch knew all along that ''Missourium'' was actually just ''Mastodon'' is uncertain, but he eventually admitted in 1857 that the synonymy was true.<ref name="koch"/>
The validities of both ''Tetracaulodon'' and ''Missourium'' were rejected by Owen in 1842, although he retained the former name informally.<ref>{{cite journal|last=Owen|first=Richard|year=1842|title=Report on the Missourium now exhibiting at the Egyptian Hall|journal=Proceedings of the Geological Society of London|volume=3|number=2|pages=689–695|url=https://www.biodiversitylibrary.org/item/96958#page/717/mode/1up}}</ref> By 1869, American paleontologist [[Joseph Leidy]] determined that ''Mastodon americanus'' is the senior species synonym and listed ''M. giganteum'' as a junior synonym. He also listed ''Mammut'', ''Harpagmotherium'', ''Mastotherium'', ''Missourium'', and ''Leviathan'' as synonyms of ''Mastodon''. He also noted that ''M. americanum'' as a species was highly variable in morphology.<ref>{{cite book|last=Leidy|first=Joseph|year=1869|title=The extinct mammalian fauna of Dakota and Nebraska : Including an account of some allied forms from other localities, together with a synopsis of the mammalian remains of North America|publisher=J.B. Lippincott|url=https://www.biodiversitylibrary.org/item/60918#page/398/mode/1up}}</ref><ref name="utah">{{cite journal|last=Miller|first=Wade E.|year=1987|title=Mammut americanum, Utah's First Record of the American Mastodon|journal=Journal of Paleontology|volume=61|number=1|pages=168-183|url=https://www.jstor.org/stable/1305142}}</ref>
=== Warren Mastodon ===
[[File:Mastodon giganteus Mammut americanum skeleton sketch.png|thumb|"''Mastodon giganteus''" (= ''Mammut americanum'') skeleton as depicted in 1852. The individual skeleton is informally named "Warren Mastodon" after [[John Collins Warren]].]]
4 years after the "Peale's Mastodon" was auctioned off, [[John Collins Warren]] wrote about the discovery of a complete skeleton of "''M. giganteus''" in his monograph ''The Mastodon Giganteus of North America'' in 1852. He referenced that previously, it was ''M. angustidens'' that was better known despite the earlier history of M. giganteus because well-preserved fossils dating to the [[Miocene]] were found in France. He said that ''M. giganteus'' differed in geological position from ''M. angustidens'' and that remains of the former were recovered from the US states of Kentucky, [[Mississippi]], Missouri, and [[South Carolina]]. According to Warren, in a dry summer of 1845 near Newburgh, Nathaniel Brewster employed laborers to remove [[lacustrine deposits]] to fertilize the neighboring fields. They dug slightly deep until they accidentally came across a hard object that they were not able to immediately identify. The proprietor's son William C. Brewster, his son-in-law Mr. Weeks, and some assistants came to observe with a large number of other spectators the fossil. The laborers rapidly exhumed the bones, uncovering a {{cvt|4|ft}} long [[cranium]] with a distorted lower jaw plus bones of the [[vertebral column]], tail, [[pelvis]], [[rib]]s, and tusks in mostly natural positions of being next to each other.<ref name="warren2">{{cite book|last=Warren|first=John Collin|year=1852|title=The Mastodon giganteus of North America|section=Geological situation and causes of preservation|publisher=John Wilson and Son|pages=154–167|url=https://www.biodiversitylibrary.org/item/126175#page/174/mode/1up}}</ref><ref name="warren3">{{cite book|last=Warren|first=John Collin|year=1852|title=The Mastodon giganteus of North America|section=Discovery of the skeleton|publisher=John Wilson and Son|pages=4–7|url=https://www.biodiversitylibrary.org/item/126175#page/24/mode/1up}}</ref><ref name="AMNH">{{cite journal|last=Horenstein|first=Sidney|year=2008|title=New York City Mastodons: Big Apple Tusks|journal=Evolution: Education and Outreach|volume=1|pages=204–209|doi=10.1007/s12052-008-0042-y}}</ref>
By the end of the 2nd day of labor, they recovered a mostly complete skeleton except for a few components, some of which were recovered later. Unlike previous proboscidean fossils, the skeleton was almost perfectly preserved and was of a brown color rather than a black one. The skeleton, deposited from Nathaniel Brewster's stables, was cleaned and dried then given to physician Dr. Prime, who articulated the remains. The skeleton was exhibited in [[New York City]] as well as other New England towns for the next three to four months. The bones afterward came in possession of Warren, who with his friend, physician [[Nathaniel B. Shurtleff]], disarticulated and rearranged the bones for nearly four weeks.<ref name="warren2"/><ref name="newyork">{{cite book|last1=Hartnagel|first1=Chris Andrew|last2=Bishop|first2=Sherman Chauncey|year=1922|title=The Mastodons, Mammoths and Other Pleistocene Mammals of New York State: Being a Descriptive Record of All Known Occurrences|publisher=University of the State of New York|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=9rxRAQAAIAAJ&printsec=frontcover#v=onepage&q&f=false}}</ref>
Also of note were the contents that were buried with the skeleton, which composed of a mass substance of crushed branches, which were initially ignored. Warren stated that a few experts like Prime confirmed that they were large portions of vegetative substances such as coniferous tree twigs or shrubs consumed by the individual proboscidean. Therefore, ''M. giganteus'' was confirmed outright to be an herbivore according to Warren. He also wrote about apparent evidence of hair of the species previously found in [[Montgomery, New York]] and described by other researchers, although he did not elaborate further on his opinions on the matter.<ref name="warren4">{{cite book|last=Warren|first=John Collin|year=1852|title=The Mastodon giganteus of North America|section=Food and hair|publisher=John Wilson and Son|pages=144–149|url=https://www.biodiversitylibrary.org/item/126175#page/164/mode/1up}}</ref>
After Warren's death in 1856, under his will, the mammutid skeleton were sent to his family while Warren's bones were delivered to the [[Harvard Medical School]]. The medical school later swapped the skeletons with Warren's family. The "Warren mastodon" was kept in a small exhibition room in [[Harvard University]] for about half a century. The skeleton was sold to the American financier [[J. P. Morgan]] for $30,000 in 1906 and subsequently donated to the [[American Museum of Natural History]] after he agreed to fulfill American paleontologist [[Henry Fairfield Osborn]]'s request to cover the costs on behalf of the museum. Today, the "Warren Mastodon" is at the entrance of the Hall of Mammals exhibit in the natural history museum.<ref name="monsterafter">{{cite book|last=Semonin|first=Paul|year=2000|title=American Monster: How the Nation's First Prehistoric Creature Became a Symbol of National Identity|chapter=Afterword: The Myth of Wild Nature|publisher=NYU Press|pages=392–411}}</ref><ref name="AMNH"/>
=== American wastebasket history ===
In the second half of the 19th century, the wastebasket taxon status of "''Mastodon''" carried over to North America and South America. This meant that many fossil proboscidean species of the two continents that are now classified to distant genera were lumped into the genus ''Mastodon'' at some point.<ref name="osborn"/> Leidy erected a proboscidean species ''Mastodon'' (''Tetralophodon'') ''mirificus'' from the [[Pliocene]] deposit of [[Niobrara, Nebraska|Niobrara]], [[Nebraska]] in 1858.<ref>{{cite journal|last=Leidy|first=Joseph|year=1858|title=Notice of remains of extinct vertebrata, from the Valley of the Niobrara River, collected during the Exploring Expedition of 1857, in Nebraska, under the command of Lieut. G. K. Warren, U. S. Top. Eng., by Dr. F. V. Hayden, Geologist to the Expedition|journal=Proceedings of the Academy of Natural Sciences of Philadelphia|volume=10|url=https://www.biodiversitylibrary.org/page/47535620#page/40/mode/1up}}</ref> American paleontologist [[Edward Drinker Cope]] established three additional North American proboscidean species three decades later that he lumped into ''Mastodon'': ''M. proavus'' in 1873,<ref>{{cite book|last=Cope|first=Edward Drinker|year=1873|title=Synopsis of new vertebrata from the Tertiary of Colorado, obtained during the summer of 1873|publisher=U.S. Government Printing Office|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=Rz4sAAAAYAAJ&q=proavus#v=onepage&q&f=false}}</ref> ''M. productus'' in 1874,<ref>{{cite journal|last=Cope|first=Edward Drinker|year=1874|title=On a New Mastodon and Rodent|journal=Proceedings of the Academy of Natural Sciences of Philadelphia|volume=26|pages=221–223|url=https://www.biodiversitylibrary.org/item/17720#page/249/mode/1up}}</ref> and ''M. euhypodon'' in 1884.<ref>{{cite journal|last=Cope|first=Edward Drinker|year=1884|title=The Mastodons of North America|journal=The American naturalist|volume=18|page=524–526|url=https://www.biodiversitylibrary.org/item/130575#page/555/mode/1up}}</ref> Leidy followed up by erecting ''M. floridanus'' in 1884.<ref>{{cite journal|last=Leidy|first=Joseph|year=1886|title=Mastodon and Llama from Florida|journal=Proceedings of the Academy of Natural Sciences of Philadelphia|volume=38|pages=11–12|url=https://www.biodiversitylibrary.org/item/84754#page/13/mode/1up}}</ref> Argentine paleontologist [[Florentino Ameghino]] erected multiple South American species that he determined belonged to ''Mastodon'', notably the now-valid ''M. platensis'', in 1888.<ref>{{cite journal|last=Ameghino|first=Florentino|year=1888|title=Rápidas diagnosis de algunos mamíferos fósiles nuevos de la República Argentina|journal=Obras Completas, Buenos Aires|volume=5|pages=469–480}}</ref><ref name="notiomastodon">{{cite journal|last1=Mothé|first1=Dimila|last2=Avilla|first2=Leonardo S.|last3=Cozzuol|first3=Mário|last4=Winck|first4=Gisele R.|year=2012|title=Taxonomic revision of the Quaternary gomphotheres (Mammalia: Proboscidea: Gomphotheriidae) from the South American lowlands|journal=Quaternary International|volume=276–277|pages=2–7|doi=10.1016/j.quaint.2011.05.018}}</ref>
In addition to still-valid species names, several synonymous or dubious species names ultimately belonging to different genera were erected within the Americas as well throughout the 19th century.<ref name="notiomastodon"/><ref name="rhynchotherium">{{cite journal|last1=Lucas|first1=Spencer G.|last2=Morgan|first2=Gary S.|year=2008|title=Taxonomy of Rhynchotherium (Mammalia, Proboscidea) from the Miocene-Pliocene of North America|journal=New Mexico Museum of Natural History and Science Bulletin|volume=44|pages=71–87|url=https://www.researchgate.net/publication/281863115_Taxonomy_of_Rhynchotherium_Mammalia_Proboscidea_from_the_Miocene-Pliocene_of_North_America}}</ref><ref>{{cite journal|last=Dalquest|first=Walter W.|year=1975|title=Vertebrate fossils from the Blanco local fauna of Texas|journal=Occasional Papers of the Museum, Texas Tech University|number=30|pages=1–52|url=https://www.biodiversitylibrary.org/item/241967#page/1/mode/1up}}</ref>
=== 20th century proboscidean revisions ===
In 1902, American paleontologist [[Oliver Perry Hay]] listed ''Mammut'' as the prioritized genus name given its status as the oldest genus name, making ''Mastodon'', ''Tetracaulodon'', and ''Missourium'' classified as junior synonyms. He also established ''M. americanum'' as the type species.<ref name="mammut"/> The genus name ''Mastodon'' was subsequently abandoned by many American paleontologists in favor of ''Mammut'' within the early 20th century such as [[Theodore Sherman Palmer]] in 1904, [[Richard Swann Lull]] in 1908, and various others. Meanwhile, the term "mastodon" still saw usage as a common name.<ref name="etymology">{{cite journal|last=Palmer|first=Theodore Sherman|year=1904|title=A List of the Genera and Families of Mammals|journal=North American Fauna|issue=23|doi=10.3996/nafa.23.0001 |url=https://www.biodiversitylibrary.org/item/83341#page/405/mode/1up|doi-access=free}}</ref><ref>{{cite journal|last=Lull|first=Richard Swann|year=1908|title=The Evolution of the Elephant|journal=American Journal of Science|series=4|volume=25|pages=169–212|url=https://www.biodiversitylibrary.org/page/40227522#page/193/mode/1up}}</ref><ref>{{cite book|last=Hay|first=Oliver P.|year=1923|title=The Pleistocene of North America and its vertebrated animals from the states east of the Mississippi River and from the Canadian provinces east of longitude 95°|publisher=Carnegie Institution of Washington|number=322|url=https://www.biodiversitylibrary.org/item/66297#page/4/mode/1up}}</ref><ref name="osborn"/> Osborn in 1936 expressed his disdain for the genus name ''Mammut'', who recognized the recent usage of the name but considered it to be a "barbaric term" that would "rob Cuvier of his clear conception of grinding tooth structure" and be "gross injustice to the founder of vertebrate palæontology." He suggested that taxonomic priority of ''Mammut'' be disregarded in favor of the at-the-time popular ''Mastodon'' on the basis of his subjective opinion that Cuvier's name is more fitting.<ref name="osborn"/>
Osborn in his long time of specialization on fossil proboscideans favored many genus names (most of which were erected by other paleontologists) that most species formerly classified to ''Mastodon''/''Mammut'' have since been reclassified to, such as ''Anancus'', ''Trilophodon'' (= ''Gomphotherium''), ''Zygolophodon'', ''[[Rhynchotherium]]'', ''[[Cuvieronius]]'', ''[[Stegomastodon]]'', ''[[Notiomastodon]]'', ''[[Stegolophodon]]'', and ''[[Choerolophodon]]''. As a result of the revisions, he favored only one species classified in ''Mastodon'', ''M. americanus''.<ref name="osborn"/> The [[Amebelodontidae|amebelodont]] ''[[Stenobelodon]]'' is the only genus erected after the early 20th century proboscidean taxonomic revisions to now include a species formerly assigned to ''Mastodon''.<ref name="stenobelodon">{{cite journal|last=Lambert|first=W. David|year=2023|title=Implications of discoveries of the shovel-tusked gomphothere Konobelodon (Proboscidea, Gomphotheriidae) in Eurasia for the status of Amebelodon with a new genus of shovel-tusked gomphothere, Stenobelodon|journal=Journal of Vertebrate Paleontology|volume=43|issue=1|doi=10.1080/02724634.2023.2252021}}</ref> The proboscidean genera outside of ''Mammut'' had their own complicated taxonomic revisions until most species lumped into the ''Mastodon'' wastebin eventually had solidified taxonomic affinities to the modern day.<ref>{{cite journal|last1=Mothé|first1=Dimila|last2=Avilla|first2=Leonardo S.|last3=Cozzuol|first3=Mario A.|year=2012|title=The South American Gomphotheres (Mammalia, Proboscidea, Gomphotheriidae): Taxonomy, Phylogeny, and Biogeography|journal=Journal of Mammalian Evolution|volume=20|pages=23–32|doi=10.1007/s10914-012-9192-3}}</ref><ref name="notiomastodon"/><ref name="rhynchotherium"/> Today, the genera that include species formerly classified into ''Mastodon'' include ''Gomphotherium'' (''G. angustidens'', ''G. pyrenaicum'', ''G. productum'', ''G. libycum''),<ref>{{cite journal|last1=Wang|first1=Shi-Qi|last2=Duangkrayom|first2=Jaroon|last3=Yang|first3=Xiang-Wen|year=2015|title=Occurrence of the Gomphotherium angustidens group in China, based on a revision of Gomphotherium connexum (Hopwood, 1935) and Gomphotherium shensiensis Chang and Zhai, 1978: continental correlation of Gomphotherium species across the Palearctic|journal=Paläontologische Zeitschrift|volume=89|pages=1073–1086|doi=10.1007/s12542-015-0270-8}}</ref><ref>{{cite journal|last=Göhlich|first=Ursula B.|year=2010|title=The Proboscidea (Mammalia) from the Miocene of Sandelzhausen (southern Germany)|journal=Paläontologische Zeitschrift|volume=84|number=1|pages=163–204|doi=10.1007/s12542-010-0053-1}}</ref><ref>{{cite book|last=Sanders|first=William J.|year=2023|title=Evolution and Fossil Record of African Proboscidea|publisher=CRC Press}}</ref> ''Zygolophodon'' (''Z. turicensis'', ''Z. proavus''),<ref>{{cite journal|last1=Duangkrayom|first1=Jaroon|last2=Wang|first2=Shi-Qi|last3=Deng|first3=Tao|last4=Jintasakul|first4=Pratueng|year=2016|title=The first Neogene record of Zygolophodon (Mammalia, Proboscidea) in Thailand: implications for the mammutid evolution and dispersal in Southeast Asia|journal=Journal of Paleontology|volume=91|number=1|pages=179–193|doi=10.1017/jpa.2016.143}}</ref><ref name="neogene">{{cite journal|last1=von Koenigswald|first1=Wighart|last2=Wigda|first2=Chris|last3=Göhlich|first3=Ursula B.|year=2023|title=New mammutids (Proboscidea) from the Clarendonian and Hemphillian of Oregon – a survey of Mio-Pliocene mammutids from North America|journal=The Bulletin of the Museum of Natural History of the University of Oregon|number=30|url=https://journals.oregondigital.org/nat_history/article/view/6004}}</ref> ''Cuvieronius'' (''C. hyodon''),<ref>{{cite journal|last1=Mead|first1=Jim I.|last2=Arroyo-Cabrales|first2=Joaquin|last3=Swift|first3=Sandra L.|year=2019|title=Late Pleistocene Mammuthus and Cuvieronius (proboscidea) from Térapa, Sonora, Mexico|journal=Quaternary Science Reviews|volume=223|doi=10.1016/j.quascirev.2019.105949}}</ref> ''Stegodon'' (''S. elephantoides''), ''Stegolophodon'' (''S. latidens'', ''S. cautleyi''), ''Anancus'' (''A. avernensis'', ''A. sivalensis''), ''Tetralophodon'' (''T. longirostris''), ''Choerolophodon'' (''C. pentelici''), ''Stegomastodon'' (''S. mirificus''), ''Rhynchotherium'' ("''R.''" ''euhypodon''),<ref name="rhynchotherium"/> ''Stenobelodon'' (''S. floridanus''),<ref name="stenobelodon"/> and ''Notiomastodon'' (''N. platensis'').<ref name="notiomastodon"/>
Other North American proboscidean species now classified to ''Mammut'' were erected during the rigorous proboscidean revisions. In 1921, Osborn created the species name ''Mastodon matthewi'' based on distinct molars from the [[Snake Creek Formation]] of western Nebraska, naming it in honor of [[William Diller Matthew]]. He also erected another species ''M. merriami'' from the [[Thousand Creek Formation]] in Nevada, which was eventually synonymized with ''Zygolophodon proavus''.<ref>{{cite journal|last=Osborn|first=Henry Fairfield|year=1921|title=First appearance of the true mastodon in America|journal=American Museum Novitates|number=10|pages=1–6|url=https://www.biodiversitylibrary.org/page/26890426#page/135/mode/1up}}</ref><ref name="neogene"/>
== References ==
{{reflist}}' |
New page wikitext, after the edit (new_wikitext) | '{{User sandbox}}
<!-- EDIT BELOW THIS LINE -->
{{Short description|Genus of mammals (fossil)}}
{{Automatic taxobox
| name = Mammut
| taxon = Mammut
| fossil_range = {{fossilrange|Late Miocene | Holocene}}
| image = Mammut americanum.jpg
| image_caption = Mounted ''M. americanum'' skeleton, [[American Museum of Natural History]]
| authority = [[Johann Friedrich Blumenbach|Blumenbach]], 1799
| type_species = {{extinct}}''Elephas americanus'' <br>(= †'''''Mammut americanum''''')
| type_species_authority = [[Robert Kerr (writer)|Kerr]], 1792
| subdivision_ranks = Other species
| subdivision = {{species list
| {{extinct}}'''''M. matthewi'''''|[[Henry Fairfield Osborn|Osborn]], 1921
| {{extinct}}'''''M. vexillarius'''''|[[William Diller Matthew|Matthew]], 1930
| {{extinct}}'''''M. raki'''''|[[Childs Frick|Frick]], 1933
| {{extinct}}'''''M. nevadanum'''''|[[Chester Stock|Stock]], 1936
| {{extinct}}'''''M. cosoensis'''''|[[Leonard Peter Schultz|Schultz]], 1937
| {{extinct}}'''''M. furlongi?'''''|Shotwell & Russell, 1963
| {{extinct}}'''''M. pacificum'''''|Dooley et al., 2019
}}
{{collapsible list|bullets = true
|title=<small>Species pending reassessment</small>
| {{extinct}}'''''[["Mammut" borsoni|M. borsoni]]''''' <small>[[Isaac Hays|Hays]], 1834</small>
| {{extinct}}'''''M. obliquelophus''''' <small>Mucha, 1980</small>
}}
| synonyms = {{collapsible list|bullets = true|title=<small>Genus synonymy</small>
| ''Harpagmotherium'' {{small|[[Gotthelf Fischer von Waldheim|Fischer von Waldheim]], 1808}}
| ''Mastotherium'' {{small|Fischer von Waldheim, 1814}}
| ''Mastodon'' {{small|[[Georges Cuvier|Cuvier]], 1817}}
| ''Tetracaulodon'' {{small|[[John Davidson Godman|Godman]], 1830}}
| ''Missourium'' {{small|[[Albert C. Koch|Koch]], 1840}}
| ''Leviathan'' {{small|Koch, 1841}}
| ''Pliomastodon'' {{small|Osborn, 1926}}
}}
{{collapsible list|bullets = true
|title=<small>Synonyms of ''M. americanum''</small>
| ''Elephas americanus'' {{small|Kerr, 1792}}
| ''Mammut ohioticum'' {{small|Blumenbach, 1799}}
| ''Elephas macrocephalus'' {{small|Camper, 1802}}
| ''Harpagmotherium canadense'' {{small|Fischer de Waldheim, 1808}}
| ''Elephas mastodontus'' {{small|[[Benjamin Smith Barton|Barton]], 1810}}
| ''Mastotherium megalodon'' {{small|Fischer de Waldheim, 1814}}
| ''Tapirus mastodontoides'' {{small|[[Richard Harlan|Harlan]], 1825}}
| ''Tetracaulodon mastodontoideum'' {{small|Godman, 1830}}
| ''Mastodon ohioticum'' {{small|[[Karl Eichwald|Eichwald]], 1832}}
| ''Mastodon cuvieri'' {{small|Hays, 1834}}
| ''Mastodon jeffersoni'' {{small|Hays, 1834}}
| ''Tetracaulodon collinsii'' {{small|Hays, 1834}}
| ''Tetracaulodon godmani'' {{small|Hays, 1834}}
| ''Tetracaulodon tapyroides'' {{small|Hays, 1834}}
| ''Elephas ohioticus'' {{small|[[Henri Marie Ducrotay de Blainville|de Blainville]], 1839–1864}}
| ''Missourium kochii'' {{small|Koch, 1840}}
| ''Leviathan missourii'' {{small|Koch, 1840}}
| ''Tetracaulodon osagii'' {{small|Koch, 1841}}
| ''Tetracaulodon kochii'' {{small|Koch, 1841}}
| ''Tetracaulodon bucklandii'' {{small|Grant, 1842}}
| ''Missourium theristocaulodon'' {{small|Koch, 1843}}
| ''Mastodon rugatum'' {{small|Koch, 1845}}
| ''Elephas rupertianus'' {{small|[[John Richardson (naturalist)|Richardson]], 1854}}
| ''Trilophodon ohioticus'' {{small|[[Hugh Falconer|Falconer]], 1868}}
| ''Mammut progenium'' {{small|[[Oliver P. Hay|Hay]], 1914}}
| ''Mastodon americanus plicatus'' {{small|Osborn, 1926}}
| ''Mammut francisi'' {{small|Hay, 1926}}
| ''Mammut oregonense'' {{small|Hay, 1926}}
| ''Mastodon moodiei'' {{small|[[Erwin Hinckley Barbour|Barbour]], 1931}}
| ''Mastodon americanus alaskensis'' {{small|Frick, 1933}}
| ''Mastodon acutidens'' {{small|Osborn, 1936}}
}}
{{collapsible list|bullets = true
|title=<small>Synonyms of ''M. matthewi''</small>
| ''Pliomastodon sellardsi'' {{small|[[George Gaylord Simpson|Simpson]], 1930}}
| ''Pliomastodon adamsi'' {{small|[[Claude W. Hibbard|Hibbard]], 1944}}
}}
{{collapsible list|bullets = true
|title=<small>Synonyms of ''M. vexillarius''</small>
| ''Pliomastodon vexillarius'' {{small|Matthew, 1930}}
}}
{{collapsible list|bullets = true
|title=<small>Synonyms of ''M. raki''</small>
| ''Mastodon raki'' {{small|Frick, 1933}}
}}
{{collapsible list|bullets = true
|title=<small>Synonyms of ''M. nevadanum''</small>
| ''Pliomastodon nevadanus'' {{small|Stock, 1936}}
}}
{{collapsible list|bullets = true
|title=<small>Synonyms of ''M. cosoensis''</small>
| ''Pliomastodon cosoensis'' {{small|Schultz, 1937}}
}}
{{collapsible list|bullets = true
|title=<small>Synonyms of "''M.''" ''borsoni''</small>
| ''Mastodon vellavus'' {{small|[[Auguste Aymard|Aymard]], 1847}}
| ''Mastodon vialleti'' {{small|Aymard, 1847}}
| ''Mastodon buffonis'' {{small|[[Auguste Pomel|Pomel]], 1848}}
| ''Mastodon affinis'' {{small|Pomel, 1859}}
| ''Zygolophodon borsoni'' {{small|Osborn, 1926}}
}}
{{collapsible list|bullets = true
|title=<small>Synonyms of "''M.''" ''obliquelophus''</small>
| ''M. praetypicum?'' {{small|Schlesinger, 1917}}
}}
}}
Source Tracking.:
Kerr 1792: https://www.biodiversitylibrary.org/item/119041#page/170/mode/1up
Cuvier 1806: https://www.biodiversitylibrary.org/item/93165#page/58/mode/1up
Blumenbach (1799): https://www.deutschestextarchiv.de/book/view/blumenbach_naturgeschichte_1799?p=722
Cuvier (1817): https://www.biodiversitylibrary.org/item/18030#page/275/mode/1up
Cuvier (1818): https://www.biodiversitylibrary.org/item/75704#page/28/mode/1up
Lydekker (1886): https://www.biodiversitylibrary.org/item/125734#page/45/mode/1up
Hay (1902): https://www.biodiversitylibrary.org/item/59973#page/713/mode/1up
Kunz (1916): https://books.google.com/books?id=CyRAAAAAYAAJ&pg=PA491&lpg=PA491&dq=%22mammut%22+%22missourium%22+%22mastodon%22+%221817%22+%22cuvier%22&source=bl&ots=hp2cKQ-6YU&sig=ACfU3U0iYP5A8cpOAzll3_Ef4MOf4AL_uA&hl=en&sa=X&ved=2ahUKEwjq2_3cge-CAxVOlYkEHbEuBeg4FBDoAXoECAMQAw
Simpson (1942): https://www.jstor.org/stable/pdf/985085.pdf?refreqid=fastly-default%3A414c4b9332427292728f302cf3143d95&ab_segments=&origin=&initiator=&acceptTC=1
Simpson (1945): https://books.google.com/books?id=28TPAAAAMAAJ&q=mammut#v=snippet&q=mammut&f=false
Geissert (1982): https://www.zobodat.at/pdf/Mitt-Bad-Landesver-Natkde-Natschutz-Freiburg_NF_13_0001-0007.pdf
Secondary Source History (1987): https://www.jstor.org/stable/pdf/1305142.pdf?refreqid=fastly-default%3Aa0b5b6ccec30d7454e23ccba5ab99770&ab_segments=&origin=&initiator=&acceptTC=1
Secondary Source 2: https://books.google.com/books?hl=en&lr=&id=XKdMYER-FpwC&oi=fnd&pg=PA133&dq=%22mammut%22+%22synonym%22+%22pliomastodon%22&ots=P6vB-IKOY1&sig=WK7a8KQUDlJ1l-dr98EMnlULnDY#v=onepage&q=%22mammut%22%20%22synonym%22%20%22pliomastodon%22&f=false
Secondary Source 3 (Etymology): https://archives.datapages.com/data/nogs/data/005/005012/0036.htm
Secondary Source 4: https://www.vertpala.ac.cn/EN/10.19615/j.cnki.2096-9899.210728
Secondary Source 5 (1852): https://www.biodiversitylibrary.org/item/126175#page/11/mode/1up
== Research history ==
=== "Giant's" teeth and bones finds ===
[[File:Em - Mammut americanum - 9.jpg|thumb|left|''Mammut americanum'' [[molar (tooth)|molar]] tooth, [[Rotunda Museum]]]]
The earliest account of known fossils of ''Mammut'' dates back to July 30, 1705 when ''[[The Boston News-Letter]]'' described an account, dating to July 23, 1705 in [[New York (state)|New York]], of teeth and a bone of a "[[giant]]" uncovered from the town of [[Claverack, New York]]. The newspaper stated that it was large-sized, weighed over {{cvt|4|lb}}, and was dug up some {{cvt|30|ft}} to {{cvt|40|ft}} underground from a river bank or hill. It also reported that they uncovered a [[femur]] (reported as a "thigh bone") and another flat, broad tooth with a length equivalent to four fingers of a human, but both crumbled shortly after being uncovered before they could be observed by anatomical experts. According to [[Louisiana State University]] professor Donald E. Stanford in 1959, the news brought great excitement to some people of the time as they saw it as potentially proving the existence of [[antediluvian]] giants as chronicled by the [[Bible]].<ref name="warren">{{cite book|last=Warren|first=John Collin|year=1852|title=The Mastodon giganteus of North America|section=Historical sketch|publisher=John Wilson and Son|pages=1–3|url=https://www.biodiversitylibrary.org/item/126175#page/20/mode/1up}}</ref><ref name="stanford">{{cite journal|last=Stanford|first=Donald E.|year=1959|title=The Giant Bones of Claverack, New York, 1705|journal=New York History|volume=40|number=1|pages=47–61|url=https://www.jstor.org/stable/23153528}}</ref>
Further details regarding the history of the tooth from 1705 were provided in a letter dated to 1713 (although likely written earlier) when [[Edward Hyde, 3rd Earl of Clarendon]] (known also as Lord Cornbury), communicated his report from New York to the [[Royal Society]], a [[learned society]] of [[Great Britain]]. In his subjoined letter, Lord Cornbury wrote that he sent them the "tooth of a Giant" from a [[Virginia]] fleet, desiring that it be sent to [[Gresham College]]. According to the English aristocrat, the tooth was found near the side of the [[Hudson River]] by a [[Dutch people|Dutch]] country-fellow and was sold to [[New York General Assembly]] member Van Bruggen for a [[gill (unit)|gill]] of rum. Bruggen showed the tooth to several other people, including Lord Cornbury, and was originally going to dispose of it due to its perceived worthlessness. However, he instead gave it to Lord Cornbury, who speculated that it may have a tooth of a giant as opposed to a beast or fish. He then stated that he sent Johannis Abeel, a recorder of [[Albany, New York]], to dig near the original site of the tooth to find more bones. A later letter by Abeel reveals that he traveled to Claverack where the original bones were found. He said that workers uncovered bones of a corpse that was about thirty feet long but that almost all decayed, as most broke into pieces as soon as they were handled.<ref name="stanford"/><ref>{{cite book|last=Weld|first=Charles Richard|year=1848|title=A History of the Royal Society: With Memoirs of the Presidents|chapter=Chapter XV: 1710–25|pages=398–433|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=5CUEAAAAQAAJ&printsec=frontcover#v=onepage}}</ref> Author Paul Semonin said that the accounts written by Cornbury and Abeel match up with that written by the correspondent of ''The Boston News-Letter''.<ref name="monster">{{cite book|last=Semonin|first=Paul|year=2000|title=American Monster: How the Nation's First Prehistoric Creature Became a Symbol of National Identity|chapter=Chapter 1: The Giant of Claverack in Puritan America|publisher=NYU Press|pages=15–40}}</ref>
In a diary entry by [[Edward Taylor]] dating to the summer of 1706, the writer wrote that a Dutchman named Koon brought to his house a fist-sized tooth different from that in Claverack that weighed over {{cvt|2|lb}}. Semonin suggested based on known primary sources that the Dutchmen from Albany were traveling around the American colonies with their items, later visiting [[Massachusetts]] governor [[Joseph Dudley]] in July of 1706 to show him the tooth.<ref name="monster"/> In a letter to his friend [[Cotton Mather]], he wrote about his experience with the two Dutchmen and reaffirmed his opinion that the tooth belonged to the biblical giants.<ref name="stanford"/>
Cotton Mather used the accounts from ''The Boston News-Letter'' and the letter from Dudley to communicate about the large bones and teeth to the English naturalist [[John Woodward (naturalist)|John Woodward]] in an account dating to November 17, 1712, which were referenced in the ''[[Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society]]'' journal in 1714. In it, he reinforced the theory that the teeth and bones belonged to antediluvian giants that were apparently once present in the [[New England]] region.<ref>{{cite journal|last=Mather|first=Cotton|year=1714|title=IV. An extract of several letters from Cotton Mather, D. D. to John Woodward, M. D. and Richard Waller, Esq; S. R. Secr|journal=Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society|volume=29|pages=62–71|url=https://www.biodiversitylibrary.org/item/196060#page/72/mode/1up}}</ref><ref name="stanford"/>
=== Big Bone Lick fossils ===
[[File:Proboscidean femurs 1764.png|thumb|Engravings of the femurs of an unspecified extant elephant species (top), ''M. americanum'' (middle), and a "Siberian" mammoth (bottom), 1764]]
According to Semonin, England's naturalists shifted away from the idea that the large fossils were of humanoids, an idea created by the advent of a discoveries of preserved Siberian [[mammoth]]s and subsequent comparative anatomies to extant [[elephant]]s.<ref name="monster2">{{cite book|last=Semonin|first=Paul|year=2000|title=American Monster: How the Nation's First Prehistoric Creature Became a Symbol of National Identity|chapter=Chapter 3: The Mystery of the Siberian Mammoth|publisher=NYU Press|pages=62–83}}</ref> In addition, a [[mammoth]] tooth recovered from [[South Carolina]] in 1724 or 1725 was described by [[Mark Catesby]] in a journal dating to 1743 as identified by North American slaves from Africa as belonging to an elephant, marking a shift away from identifications of fossils as belonging to human giants.<ref name="monster3">{{cite book|last=Semonin|first=Paul|year=2000|title=American Monster: How the Nation's First Prehistoric Creature Became a Symbol of National Identity|chapter=Chapter 4: Big Bone Lick|publisher=NYU Press|pages=84–110}}</ref><ref name="beginnings">{{cite journal|last=Simpson|first=George Gaylord|year=1942|title=The Beginnings of Vertebrate Paleontology in North America|journal=Proceedings of the American Philosophical Society|volume=86|number=1|pages=130–188|url=https://www.jstor.org/stable/985085}}</ref><ref>{{cite book|last=Dean|first=Patrick|year=2023|title=Nature's Messenger: Mark Catesby and His Adventures in a New World|chapter=Chapter 8: Slave Gardens and Medicines|publisher=Pegasus Books}}</ref>
In 1739, a French military expedition under the command of [[Charles III Le Moyne]] (known also as "Longueil") explored the locality of "[[Big Bone Lick State Park|Big Bone Lick]]" in what is now [[Kentucky]], an area previously known by Native Americans. Le Moyne gathered an assortment of fossil bones and teeth from the locality.<ref>{{cite journal|last=Storrs|first=Glenn W.|year=2019|title=Big Bone Lick|journal=Ohio Valley History|volume=19|number=3|pages=82–90|url=https://muse.jhu.edu/article/734797}}</ref> The discovery of the locality by Le Moyne’s military was part of a military campaign against the [[Chickasaw]] nation as part of the [[Chickasaw Wars]] in the 18th century. Upon his return to France in 1740, Le Moyne deposited a large femur, a tusk, and three molars in a collection of the [[Cabinet du Roi]] in the French [[botanical garden]] [[Jardin des plantes]]. The erroneous date of 1729 instead of 1739 as the year that Le Moyne uncovered fossils was the result of a rewritten note for a map of eastern North America that listed the wrong year. A different account by French officer [[Jean Bernard Bossu]] recorded that in 1735, his Canadian military party recovered several skeletons of "elephants" from the site, leading him to believe that the proboscideans may have wandered off from Asia to North America.<ref name="hedeen">{{cite book|last=Hedeen|first=Stanley|year=2008|title=Big Bone Lick: The Cradle of American Paleontology|chapter=Chapter 4: Gathering the Bones|publisher=University Press of Kentucky|pages=31–44}}</ref>
In 1762, French naturalist [[Louis Jean-Marie Daubenton]] reported that he examined the fossil collection brought by Longueuil from the Big Bone Lick and compared it with a Siberian femur and bones of extant elephants. Daubenton said that the bones were discovered by Native Americans (probably [[Abenaki]] hunter-warriors) who found them on an marsh's edges and took them to Longueuil's camp in [[Ohio]] territory as a gift. He came to the conclusion that the femur and tusk belonged to an elephant while the three molars were unlike those of true elephants and therefore came from a separate giant [[hippopotamus]].<ref>{{cite journal|last=Daubenton|first=Louis Jean-Marie|year=1764|title=Mémoire sur des os et des dents remarquables par leur gradeur|journal=Histoire de l'Academie Royale des Sciences, Année MDCCLXII, avec les Mémoires de Mathématiques & de Physique, pour la même année, 1762|pages=206–229|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=rT1RAAAAYAAJ&pg=RA1-PA206&lpg=RA1-PA206#v=onepage&q&f=false}}</ref><ref name="hedeen"/><ref>{{cite journal|last=Barnett|first=Lydia|year=2019|title=Showing and hiding: The flickering visibility of earth workers in the archives of earth science|journal=History of Science|volume=58|issue=3|doi=10.1177/0073275319874982}}</ref> Today, the molars are identified as belonging to ''M. americanum''.<ref>{{cite journal|last1=Tassy|first1=Pascal|last2=Göhlich|first2=Ursula B.|year=2011|title=Retour sur la série type de Gomphotherium angustidens (Proboscidea, Mammalia): de Daubenton à Cuvier, et après|journal=Estudios Geológicos|volume=67|number=2|pages=321–332|doi=10.3989/egeol.40539.191}}</ref>
[[File:Mammut molar 1767.png|thumb|left|''M. americanum'' molar illustration as provided in 1767]]
The same year, several Native Americans of the [[Shawnee]] tribe brought a large tooth and a tusk to [[Henry Bouquet]] presumably as a gift to tie with British authorities after a long time of hostility due to the [[French and Indian War]]. Bouquet wrote to [[John Bartram]] about the large fossils, believing that elephants had formerly existed in North America. Bartram contacted [[Quaker]] naturalist James Wright about the tooth and tusk fossils at [[Fort Pitt (Pennsylvania)|Fort Pitt]]. Using an interpreter, Wright learned from two Shawnee individuals that there were five entire skeletons of mammutids lying with their heads pointing towards one another. They believed that the five proboscideans were all killed by a lightning strike. When Wright asked them if they had ever seen them alive, the Shawnee interviewees responded that nobody had ever seen the creatures alive due to the bones having been observed as ancient. In Shawnee tradition, the mammals roamed in herds and were hunted by giants, who both eventually died out. The accounts told by the Shawnee individuals in 1762 are the oldest known documented interpretations of the Ohio fossils, although the traditions may have had been told for generations based on careful fossil observations.<ref name="monster3"/><ref>{{cite book|last=Mayor|first=Adrienne|year=2005|title=Fossil Legends of the First Americans|chapter=Chapter 1: The Northeast: Giants, Great Bears, and Grandfather of the Buffalo|publisher=Princeton University Press|pages=32–72}}</ref>
[[File:Elephant Mammut incognitum jaws.png|thumb|Jaws of an extant elephant in different views (left) compared to the jaws of ''Mammut'' (right)]]
The prospects of the Big Bone Lick also attracted Irish trader [[George Croghan]], who collected some bones on his journey down Ohio before then being attacked by a group of [[Kickapoo people|Kickapoo]] and [[Mascouten]] members, resulting in several people on Croghan’s party being killed and Croghan being captured. He was eventually released, although he lost his fossil collection in the process. He later recollected enough fossils to send to both [[William Petty, 2nd Earl of Shelburne]] (or Lord Shelburne) and [[Benjamin Franklin]] in 1767.<ref name="legacy1">{{cite book|last=Thomson|first=Keith Stewart|year=2008|title=The Legacy of the Mastodon|chapter=Chapter 2: Big Bone Lick|publisher=Yale University Press|pages=10–23}}</ref> Croghan was thanked by both Franklin and his friend [[Peter Collinson (botanist)|Peter Collinson]] the same year for the fossils, leading them to question why so many proboscidean fossils were preserved in the Big Bone Lick site and how they were apparently present in North America in the first place. Collinson in one of his scholarly papers concluded that the peculiar grinders (the molars) were built for herbivorous diets of branches of trees and shrubs as well as other vegetation, a view later followed by Franklin.<ref>{{cite thesis|last=Daiutolo, Jr.|first=Robert|year=2015|title=George Croghan: The Life of a Conqueror|publisher=Rutgers University–New Brunswick: School of Graduate Studies|url=https://rucore.libraries.rutgers.edu/rutgers-lib/48442/PDF/1/play/}}</ref><ref>{{cite journal|last=Collinson|first=Peter|year=1767|title=XLVII. Sequel to the foregoing Account of the large Fossil Teeth|journal=Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society of London|volume=57|url=https://www.biodiversitylibrary.org/item/208064#page/534/mode/1up}}</ref>
Scottish anatomist [[William Hunter (anatomist)|William Hunter]] described fossils of the mammutid from the Midwestern locality in 1768, recalling that French naturalists thought of the bones as belonging to elephants. Hunter agreed that the tusks were like those of elephants, but he and his brother [[John Hunter (surgeon)|John Hunter]] observed that the teeth were not like those of modern elephants. He determined that the "grinders" from Ohio were of a carnivorous animal but believed that the tusks belonged to the same animal. After examining fossils from Franklin and Lord Shelburne, Hunter was convinced that the "''pseudo-elephant''", or "''animal incognitum''" (shortened as "''incognitum''"), was an animal species separate from elephants that might have also been the same as the proboscideans found in Siberia. He concluded his article with the opinion that although regrettable to philosophers, humanity should be thankful heaven that the animal, if truly carnivorous, was extinct.<ref>{{cite journal|last=Hunter|first=William|year=1768|title=V. Observations on the bones, commonly supposed to be elephants bones, which have been found near the river Ohio in America|journal=Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society of London|volume=58|pages=34–45|url=https://www.biodiversitylibrary.org/item/207945#page/60/mode/1up}}</ref> Semonin argued that Hunter's usage of the word "extinct" for the fossil animal was controversial, as it pushed the ideas that the extinction of the "carnivorous" animal was a blessing for the human race and that wild animals and "inferior" human races were subject to extinctions over "superior" human races under the will of God's creation.<ref name="monster4">{{cite book|last=Semonin|first=Paul|year=2000|title=American Monster: How the Nation's First Prehistoric Creature Became a Symbol of National Identity|chapter=Chapter 6: The Anatomy of a Carnivore|publisher=NYU Press|pages=136–161}}</ref><ref name="beginnings">{{cite journal|last=Simpson|first=George Gaylord|year=1942|title=The Beginnings of Vertebrate Paleontology in North America|journal=Proceedings of the American Philosophical Society|volume=86|number=1|pages=130–188|url=https://www.jstor.org/stable/985085}}</ref>
=== Early American observations ===
{{multiple image
| align = right
| image1= Buffon 1707-1788.jpg
| image2= T Jefferson by Charles Willson Peale 1791 2.jpg
| total_width = 300
| total_height= 300
| footer = [[Georges-Louis Leclerc, Comte de Buffon]] (left) proposed the 18th-century theory that faunas of North America were subject to "[[social degeneration]]," or reductions in sizes, an idea that was opposed by [[Thomas Jefferson]] (right)
}}
For much of the 18th century, the theory of [[social degeneration]], an idea envisioned by [[Georges-Louis Leclerc, Comte de Buffon]] in which the New World continents, because of the cold climates and humidity, caused living humans and other animals to degrade in size. The idea also pushed concepts of evolution of species and extinction, making it controversial at the time. A tooth of the "''incognitum''" from Ohio that was sent to Buffon by Collinson in 1767 may have challenged Buffon's perception of degeneracy, as Buffon previously mostly ignored fossil evidence from North America. Semonin defined the events as setting up a basis for [[American nationalism]], since American degeneracy was seen as an offensive concept by Anglo-American naturalists.<ref name="monster5">{{cite book|last=Semonin|first=Paul|year=2000|title=American Monster: How the Nation's First Prehistoric Creature Became a Symbol of National Identity|chapter=Chapter 5: The American ''Incognitum'' in Paris|publisher=NYU Press|pages=111–135}}</ref>
Fossils of ''Mammut'' from the Big Bone Lick locality were regularly collected by merchants from [[Philadelphia]], [[Pennsylvania]] and Native American traders, who sold the remains to American connoisseurs and European scientific communities. At least a few were collected by upper class Americans with interest in natural history.<ref name="monster6">{{cite book|last=Semonin|first=Paul|year=2000|title=American Monster: How the Nation's First Prehistoric Creature Became a Symbol of National Identity|chapter=Chapter 7: The "Monstrous Grinders" in the American Revolution|publisher=NYU Press|pages=162–185}}</ref>
In December of 1785, Reverend Robert Annan wrote an account recalling an event in which workers discovered bones in his farm near the Hudson River in New York in fall of 1780. The workers found four molars in addition to another that was broken and thrown away. They also uncovered bones, including vertebrae that broke shortly after. Annan expressed his confusion at what the animal could be but speculated based on its "grinders" that it was carnivorous in diet. He speculated also that it was probably extinct due to some catastrophe within the globe. The reverend also noted that [[George Washington]] visited his house to see the remains, the [[American Revolutionary War]] general informing him that he had a molar from Ohio. The account was eventually published in 1793.<ref>{{cite journal|last=Annan|first=Robert|year=1793|title=Account of a Skeleton of a Large Animal, found near Hudson's River|journal=Memoirs of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences|volume=2|number=1|pages=160–164}}</ref> Washington's visit to Annan's house to view the fossils meant news to other people in the New England region, a US colonel named [[David Humphreys (soldier)|David Humphreys]] informing [[Yale University]] president [[Ezra Stiles]] that Washington kept fossil teeth from Ohio that resembled those at Annan's farm.<ref name="monster6"/>
American statesman [[Thomas Jefferson]] wrote his ''[[Notes on the State of Virginia]]'' the same time that the fossils from Annan's farm were described, eventually having it published in 1785.<ref name="monster6"/> Referring to the fossil proboscideans of North America as "mammoths" and mentioning that Native Americans called them "big buffaloes," Jefferson stated his thoughts that they may have been carnivorous, still exist in the northern parts of North America, and are related to mammoths whose remains were found in Siberia. Jefferson expressed his opinion that the "grinders" did not belong to hippopotamuses for the reason that no skeletal remains of them had ever been found in North America. The statesman was also cautious of the idea that elephants and mammoths were the same animals. Jefferson referenced Buffon's theory of American degeneracy, countering it by using extant and extinct animal measurements, including those of "mammoths," as proof that North America faunas were not "degenerative" in size.<ref>{{cite book|last=Jefferson|first=Thomas|year=1785|title=Notes on the State of Virginia|publisher=Philippe Denis Pierres|pages=42–url=https://books.google.com/books?id=DTWttRSMtbYC&printsec=frontcover#v=onepage&q&f=false}}</ref>
=== Early taxonomic history ===
In the 1790s, the "''American incognitum''" was subject to research by multiple taxonomists. Scottish writer [[Robert Kerr (writer)|Robert Kerr]] erected the species name ''Elephas americanus'' in 1792 based on fossil tusks and "grinders" from the Big Bone Lick locality. He stated that the tusks were similar to elephants while the molars were completely different because they were covered with enamel and had a double row of high conical [[cusp (anatomy)|cusp]] processes. Kerr expressed being unsure about the taxonomic affinities of the molars while referencing that [[Thomas Pennant]] supposed that they belong to an unknown species within the genus ''[[Elephas]]'', giving the common name "American elephant."<ref>{{cite book|last=Kerr|first=Robert|year=1792|title=The animal kingdom, or zoological system, of the celebrated Sir Charles Linnæus. containing a complete systematic description, arrangement, and nomenclature, of all the known species and varieties of the mammalia, or animals which give suck to their young Class I Mammalia|publisher=Edinburgh|pages=115–117|url=https://www.biodiversitylibrary.org/item/119041#page/169/mode/1up}}</ref>
German naturalist [[Johann Friedrich Blumenbach]] also followed up with more taxonomic descriptions of fossil proboscideans in 1799. The first fossil species, recovered from Germany, was described as belonging to the newly erected species ''Elephas primigenius''? (now known as ''[[Mammuthus primigenius]]''). The second was what he considered to be an unknown "colossal land monster of the prehistoric world," considering it to be the "mammoth." He created the genus ''Mammut'' and erected the species ''Mammut ohioticum'' based on fossil bones dug up from Ohio in North America. He said that the species was distinguished from other animals of the prehistoric world based on the unusual shapes of the large molars. The genus name "Mammut" refers to the German translation for "mammoth."<ref>{{cite book|last=Blumenbach|first=Johann Friedrich|year=1799|title=Handbuch der Naturgeschichte [6. ed.]|publisher=Göttingen|pages=695–698|url=https://www.deutschestextarchiv.de/book/view/blumenbach_naturgeschichte_1799?p=719}}</ref>
French naturalist [[Georges Cuvier]] also described known fossil proboscidean species back in 1796, although his account was later published in 1799. He considered that the remains uncovered from Siberia were true "mammoths" that had similar dentitions to extant elephants but had some morphological differences. He mentioned the fossil remains that were brought back by Longueil from Ohio back in 1739 and several researchers from previous decades who noted the unusual molars and thought that they belonged to different animals like hippopotamuses. He followed recognition in the previously established species "''Elephas americanus''" and argued that the species was different from elephants and mammoths and cannot be found amongst living animals due to extinction from [[catastrophism]].<ref>{{cite journal|last=Cuvier|first=Georges|year=1799|title=Mémoire sur les espèces d'éléphans vivantes et fossiles|journal=Mémoires de l'Institut des Sciences et Arts|pages=1–22|url=https://www.biodiversitylibrary.org/page/16303001#page/175/mode/1up}}</ref><ref name="arctic">{{cite journal|last=Froese|first=Duane|year=2014|title=The curious case of the Arctic mastodons|journal=Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences|volume=111|number=52|pages=18405–18406|doi=10.1073/pnas.1422018112}}</ref>
The proboscidean species was subject to several other species names given by other taxonomists within the earliest 18th century, such as the genus name ''Harpagmotherium'' by the Russian naturalist [[Gotthelf Fischer von Waldheim]] in 1808.<ref name="osborn">{{cite book|last=Osborn|first=Harry Fairfield|year=1936|title=Proboscidea: a monograph of the discovery, evolution, migration and extinction of the mastodonts and elephants of the world|volume=1|publisher=J. Pierpont Morgan Fund by the trustees of the American Museum of Natural History|url=https://www.biodiversitylibrary.org/item/44913#page/1/mode/1up}}</ref>
=== Peale's complete skeleton exhibition ===
[[File:C W Peale - The Exhumation of the Mastadon.jpeg|thumb|The 1806–1808 painting ''The Exhumation of the Mastadon'' by [[Charles Willson Peale]]]]
American painter [[Charles Willson Peale]] worked with ''Mammut'' fossils as early as 1783 when he was commissioned by the German physician [[Christian Friedrich Michaelis]] to draw the mammutid fossils in the collection belonging to American physician [[John Morgan (physician)|John Morgan]].<ref>{{cite journal|last=Sellers|first=Charles Coleman|year=1969|title=Charles Willson Peale with Patron and Populace. A Supplement to "Portraits and Miniatures by Charles Willson Peale". With a Survey of His Work in Other Genres|journal=Transactions of the American Philosophical Society|volume=59|number=3|pages=1–146|url=https://www.jstor.org/stable/pdf/1006131.pdf?refreqid=fastly-default%3A5f016195744a7b84f81e7c4fdaf7ffb9&ab_segments=&origin=&initiator=&acceptTC=1}}</ref> He also opened his own natural history museum in Philadelphia in 1786, but it was not until the 19th century that it became significant to the paleontological history of ''Mammut''. In June of 1801, he visited [[Newburgh (town), New York|Newburgh]], New York to view skeletal remains found on a farm belonging to John Masten.<ref name="peale">{{cite journal|last=Zygmont|first=Brian J.|year=2015|title=Charles Willson Peale’s ''The Exhumation of the Mastodon'' and the Great Chain of Being: The Interaction of Religion, Science, and Art in Early-Federal America|journal=Text Matters|volume=5|number=5|pages=95–111|doi=10.1515/texmat-2015-0008}}</ref> The skeletal remains began to be uncovered as early as 1799 when workers found an approximately {{cvt|18|in}} long thighbone while digging a [[marl]] pit at the farm locality. A crowd of about one hundred people gathered to view the skeletal discoveries, including local physician and later fossil locality supervisor James G. Graham. Although many of the specimens were broken in the process, they were part of the first known complete skeleton of ''Mammut''. Initially, Masten refused to sell the fossils in order to wait for all skeletal remains to be dug up.<ref name="monster7">{{cite book|last=Semonin|first=Paul|year=2000|title=American Monster: How the Nation's First Prehistoric Creature Became a Symbol of National Identity|chapter=Chapter 13: Exhumation of the Monster|publisher=NYU Press|pages=315–340}}</ref>
Peale at first asked Masten for permission to sketch the skeletal remains, but he later purchased full ownership of the fossils from Masten for $300 ($200 for the already excavated bones and $100 for additional excavations for fossils on his estate). Shortly after exhibiting his large-scale drawings of the fossils to the [[American Philosophical Society]] (APS) in Philadelphia, he asked the circle's vice president Robert Patterson for inquiry regarding a loan to complete excavation at Masten's farm. The APS's members unanimously voted to provide Peale $500 for his endeavors on July 24, 1801. To unearth the second skeleton in what is now the [[Peale's Barber Farm Mastodon Exhumation Site]], they used a mill-like device to drain a {{cvt|12|ft}} deep marl pit. Although the endeavors were almost threatened by a thunderstorm and potential flood, the storm passed, allowing for completion of the excavations. Peale thought that the event involving the excavation of the fossils were worth portraying as an artwork, producing a painting now called ''The Exhumation of the Mastodon'' in 1806-1808.<ref name="peale"/> The excavations themselves costed nearly $2,000 due to the hirings of workers and the construction of the wheel.<ref name="incognitum">{{cite book|editor-last1=Verhoeven|editor-first1=W.M.|editor-last2=Kautz|editor-first2=Beth Dolan|last=Gribbin|first=Laura|year=1999|title=Revolutions and Watersheds: Transatlantic Dialogues, 1775-1815|chapter=Thomas Jefferson, Charles Willson Peale, and ''The Great American Incognitum''|publisher=Rodopi|pages=103–120}}</ref>
[[File:Mastodon HLMD.jpg|thumb|left|''Mammut'' skeleton previously displayed by Charles Peale at his museum, now on display at [[Hessisches Landesmuseum Darmstadt]]]]
Charles Peale returned to assemble a complete skeleton of ''Mammut'' from September of 1801 up until December of the same year, when on December 4, he formally announced that he was preparing to display the assembled skeleton for the month. On December 24, Peale invited members of the American Philosophical Society to view the displayed skeleton, and its exhibit was opened to the public the next day on December 25. While admission to the museum costed 25 cents, admission to the "Skeleton of the Mammoth" exhibit costed an additional 50 cents. The exhibit was viewable to the public for six nights a week since Peale installed lamps there. Peale was able to repay his debts to the American Philosophical Society thanks to the profits of the exhibit.<ref name="peale"/> The exhibit earned Peale profits of around $3,000 between 1803 and 1807.<ref name="incognitum"/> The exhibition, featuring the first complete skeleton of ''Mammut'' (known also as "Peale's Mastodon"), was a huge success that attracted thousands of visitors to Peale's museum, the skeleton becoming famous and a US national symbol.<ref>{{cite journal|last=Hoffman|first=Sheila K.|year=2018|title=The Origins of Puritan Politics in US Museums: Nation Building and “The Arts” from 1776 to 1806|journal=ICOFOM Study Series|volume=46|pages=131–145|doi=10.4000/iss.1025}}</ref>
Charles Peale entrusted the job of promotion of the articulated skeleton to his son [[Rembrandt Peale]], who took it with him on his tour to Europe. There, it was used for promotions of the fossil proboscidean and for Jefferson's final rebuttals against Buffon's arguments for supposed inferiority of American faunas. Author Keith Stewart Thomson argued that the promotion of the "mastodon" skeleton made it a symbol of the strength of American nationalism and that "mammoth" as a term became associated with gigantism.<ref name="peale2">{{cite book|last=Thomson|first=Keith Stewart|year=2008|title=The Legacy of the Mastodon|chapter=Chapter 6: Fossils and Show Business: Mr. Peale’s Mastodon|publisher=Yale University Press|pages=46–54}}</ref>
Although Jefferson shifted towards the view that the "mammoth" of North America was a browser, Charles Peale and Rembrandt Peale both thought of it as being carnivorous in contrast to elephants. After his return from Europe, Rembrandt Peale decided to curve the tusks of the articulated skeleton down, justifying in 1803 that the tusks would have been used in rooting up shellfish from the ground or climbing up river banks and lakes. It was not until 1826 that [[John Davidson Godman]] restored the upward positions of the tusks of the skeleton, using Cuvier's observations of "''Mastodon''" to argue that no evidence points towards downward-curving tusks.<ref name="peale2"/><ref>{{cite book|last=Peale|first=Rembrandt|year=1803|title=An historical disquisition on the mammoth: or, great American incognitum, an extinct, immense, carnivorous animal, whose fossil remains have been found in North America|publisher=E. Lawrence|url=https://www.biodiversitylibrary.org/item/133378#page/1/mode/1up}}</ref>
As a result of the museum's bankruptcy, the first skeleton's specimens were sold to some German spectators in around 1848, who failed to sell them to French king [[Louis Philippe I]], the [[British Museum]], and the [[Royal College of Surgeons of England]]. It was temporarily displayed in [[London]] but was eventually sold to [[Hessisches Landesmuseum Darmstadt]] in Germany where it is now displayed. The second skeleton's specimens landed eventually at the [[American Museum of Natural History]].<ref name="peale2"/>
=== Cuvier's proboscidean reevaluations ===
[[File:Mammut Mastodonte Skeleton Cuvier 1806.png|thumb|Sketch of the skeleton of ''Mammut'', labeled as "Mastodonte"]]
In 1806, Cuvier wrote multiple extended research articles on fossil proboscideans of Eurasia and the Americas. He stated that the bones that Buffon previously described from North America were not of elephants but another animal that he referred to as the "''mastodonte''," or the "''animal of Ohio''." He also made reference to the molars from mammoths previously identified by Catesby and the African slaves and said that the bones of the "''mastodons''" were much more common in North America than those of "elephants."<ref>{{cite journal|last=Cuvier|first=Georges|year=1806|title=Sur les éléphans vivans et fossiles|journal=Annales du Muséum d'histoire naturelle|volume=8|pages=1–68}}</ref> He also reported about fossil bones of proboscideans that German naturalist [[Alexander von Humboldt]] uncovered from what is now [[Colombia]]. Humboldt reported back in 1803 that he sent a collection of the fossil bones similar African elephants and the Ohio proboscidean to Cuvier. Cuvier wrote that more thorough examinations revealed to him that the fossils belonged to a different species of "mastodon."<ref>{{cite journal|last=Cuvier|first=Georges|year=1806|title=Comparaison des mâchelières de l'éléphant des Indes et de l'éléphant d'Afrique, et premier caractère distinctif de ces deux espèces. Exarien des diverses mâchhelières fossiles d'éléphant.|journal=Annales du Muséum d'histoire naturelle|volume=8|pages=120–130}}</ref><ref>{{cite journal|last=von Humboldt|first=Alexander|year=1803|title=Extrait de plusieurs lettres de M. A. de Humboldt|journal=Annales du Muséum national d'histoire naturelle|volume=2|pages=322–337|url=https://www.biodiversitylibrary.org/item/23265#page/391/mode/1up}}</ref>
Cuvier reinforced the idea that the extinct "mastodon" was an animal close in relationship to elephants that differed by jaws with large tubercles. He also said that it was improperly referred to by English and American people as "mammoths." He also said that it was the largest of all fossil animals, especially with the large-sized molars for which there are no modern analogues. The French naturalist emphasized that the Siberian mammoths were historically confused with American "mammoths" by other naturalists despite not being the same. As a result, he suggested that "mammoth" and "carnivorous elephant" be discontinued as names for the species and that it receive a new genus name instead. Cuvier said that for "''mastodonte''," he derived the name's etymology (compound {{lang|grc|μαστός}} ({{translit|grc|mastós}}, "breast") + {{lang|grc|ὀδούς}} ({{translit|grc|odoús}}, "tooth") from [[Ancient Greek]] to mean "nipple tooth," since he thought that it expressed the characteristic form of the teeth. He also made an account of the history of the mammutid based on prior scientific literature, mentioning the early 18th-century teeth, the Big Bone Lick locality, and Peale's skeletons. Cuvier also described fossils from Europe that he said belonged to "mastodons." He also noted that the molars were different in form from elephants by the rectangular and narrow shapes and presences of furrows, making them more similar to those of hippopotamuses and pigs.<ref>{{cite journal|last=Cuvier|first=Georges|year=1806|title=Sur le grand mastodonte|journal=Annales du Muséum d'histoire naturelle|volume=2|pages=270–312|url=https://www.biodiversitylibrary.org/item/51185#page/312/mode/1up}}</ref>
In another article, he defined there being multiple "mastodon" species based on locality and size, such as an "Ohio mastodon," a "narrow-toothed mastodon" of [[Simorre]] in France, a "small-toothed mastodon" from [[Mont Blanc]] near the Italian city of [[Bologna]], and two species of the Americas listed as "mastodon of the Cordilières" and the small-sized "''Mastodonte humboldien''."<ref>{{cite journal|last=Cuvier|first=Georges|year=1806|title=Sur différentes dents du genre des mastodontes, Mais d'espèces moindres que celles de l'Oxro, trouvées en plusieurs lieux des deux continens|journal=Annales du Muséum d'histoire naturelle|volume=2|pages=401–424|url=https://www.biodiversitylibrary.org/item/51185#page/477/mode/1up}}</ref>
=== Cuvier's taxonomy ===
In 1817, the French naturalist officially established the genus name ''Mastodon'', reaffirming that it is extinct and has left no living descendants. He established that it had an overall body form similar to elephants but had molars more similar to hippopotamuses and pigs that did not serve to grind meat. The first species he erected within ''Mastodon'' was ''Mastodon giganteum'', giving it the informal name "great mastodon" and writing that that it is designated to the Ohio proboscidean with abundant fossil evidence, equal size but greater proportions to modern elephants, and diamond-shaped points of the molars. The naturalist also created the second species name ''Mastodon angustidens'' and gave it the informal name "narrow-toothed mastodon," diagnosing it as having narrower molars, smaller sizes compared to ''M. giganteum'', and range distributions in Europe and South America.<ref name="cuvier1">{{cite book|last=Cuvier|first=Georges|year=1817|title=Le règne animal distribué d'après son organisation : pour servir de base a l'histoire naturelle des animaux et d'introduction a l'anatomie comparée|chapter=Sixié ordre des mammiféres. Les pachydermes|publisher=Chez Déterville|pages=227–245|url=https://www.biodiversitylibrary.org/item/18030#page/269/mode/1up}}</ref>
In 1824, after reviewing known "mastodon" fossils from Europe, Cuvier wrote that he recognized six species of the genus ''Mastodon'': the "great mastodon" (''M. maximus''), "narrow-toothed mastodon" (''M. angustidens''), "mastodon of the Cordelières" (''M. andium''), "little mastodon" (''M. minutus''), and "tapiroid mastodon" (''M. tapiroïdes).<ref name="cuvier2">{{cite book|last=Cuvier|first=Georges|year=1824|title=Recherches sur les ossemens fossiles, où l'on rétablit les caractères de plusieurs animaux dont les révolutions du globe ont détruit les espèces|section=Rèsumè gènèral: Des Animaux dont les caractères ont ètè indiquès ou rectifiès, ou dont l'Ostèologie a ètè dècrite dans cet ouvrage|volume=5|publisher=G. Dufour and E. d'Ocagne|pages=527–536|url=https://www.biodiversitylibrary.org/item/214698#page/535/mode/1up}}</ref>
Apparently unbeknownst to Cuvier, in 1814, Fischer von Waldheim designated the genus ''Mastotherium'' as a genus name to the "mastodons" Cuvier recognized back in 1806. He gave the species ''Mastotherium megalodon'' for the "Ohio mastodon," ''M. leptodon'' for the "narrow-toothed mastodon," ''M. microdon'' for the "small-toothed mastodon," ''M. hyodon'' for the "Cordelières mastodon," and ''M. Humboldtii'' for the "little mastodon."<ref>{{cite book|last=Fischer von Waldheim|first=Gotthelf|year=1814|title=Zoognosia Tabulis synopticis illustrata|publisher=Typis Nicolai Sergeidis Vsevolozsky|url=https://books.google.com/books?hl=en&lr=&id=r3o-AAAAcAAJ&oi=fnd&pg=PA3&dq=mastotherium+megalodon&ots=tYX9_Pa1ir&sig=QeiYQiSTBN2KijPrCNMQPYM-268#v=onepage&q=mastotherium&f=false}}</ref> In addition, Swiss naturalist [[Heinrich Rudolf Schinz]] described proboscidean fossil remains and named the species ''Mastodon turicense'' in 1824 before Cuvier named it ''M. tapiroides'' the same year.<ref>{{cite book|last=Schinz|first=Heinrich Rudolf|year=1824|title=Naturgeschichte und Abbildungen der Säugethiere|publisher=Zürich: Brodtmanns Lithographische Kunstanstalt|url=https://www.biodiversitylibrary.org/item/325325#page/278/mode/1up}}</ref><ref>{{cite journal|last=Markov|first=Georgi N.|year=2004|title=The fossil proboscideans of Bulgaria and the importance of some Bulgarian finds – a brief review|journal=Historia naturalis bulgarica|volume=16|pages=139–150|url=https://www.nmnhs.com/historia-naturalis-bulgarica/pdfs/000274000162004.pdf}}</ref>
Despite Cuvier's given genus name being a junior synonym of multiple prior-named genus names, ''Mastodon'' (sometimes emended to ''Mastodonte''<ref>{{cite book|last=Lartet|first=Édouard|year=1836|title=Notice sur la colline de Sansan, suivie d'une récapitulation des diverses espèces d'animaux vertébrés fossiles, trouvés soit à Sansan, soit dans d'autres gisements du terrain tertiaire miocène dans le bassin sous-Pyrénéen|publisher=J.-A. Portes|language=French|pages=217–220|url=https://www.biodiversitylibrary.org/item/229851#page/323/mode/1up}}</ref>), became the most commonly used genus name for the 19th century.<ref name="mammut">{{cite book|last=Perry Hay|first=Oliver|year=1902|title=Bibliography and catalogue of the fossil vertebrata of North America|publisher=Washington Government Printing Office|pages=707–712|url=https://www.biodiversitylibrary.org/item/59973#page/713/mode/1up}}</ref><ref name="osborn"/> It also saw usage as a common name in the United States by the 19th century.<ref name="man">{{cite book|last=MacLean|first=John Patterson|year=1878|title=Mastodon, Mammoth, and Man|publisher=Williamson & Cantwell Publishing Co.|url=https://www.biodiversitylibrary.org/item/48926#page/7/mode/1up}}</ref>
=== European wastebasket history ===
[[File:Anancus arvernensis.JPG|thumb|Most fossil proboscidean species described in the 19th century, such as ''[[Anancus]] arvernensis'' (pictured), were classified to the genus ''Mastodon'']]
"''Mastodon''" was riddled with major taxonomic problems since proboscidean species whose dentitions matched neither [[elephantid]]s nor [[deinotheres]] were regularly classified to the genus, effectively making it a [[wastebasket taxon]]. In its early taxonomic history, species now determined as belonging to other proboscidean genera were classified to ''Mastodon'' on the basis of similar dentitions to that of "''Mastodon giganteum''" (= ''Mammut americanum'').<ref name="cuvier1"/><ref name="cuvier2"/><ref>{{cite journal|last1=Mazo|first1=A.V.|last2=van der Made|first2=Jan|year=2012|title=Iberian mastodonts: Geographic and stratigraphic distribution|journal=Quaternary International|volume=255|pages=239–256|doi=10.1016/j.quaint.2011.07.047}}</ref> Various fossil proboscidean species from Europe and Asia were classified into ''Mastodon'' in the 19th century before eventually being reclassified into distinct genera.<ref name="osborn"/>
In 1828, British naturalist [[William Clift]] wrote about newly erected species collected by [[John Crawfurd]] from Southeast Asia. He determined that the species belonged to the genus ''Mastodon'' on the basis of similar dentitions to those of ''M. giganteum'' and ''M. angustidens'', giving the species names ''M. latidens'' and ''M. elephantoides''.<ref name="clift">{{cite journal|last=Clift|first=William|year=1828|title=On the Fossil Remains of two New Species of Mastodon, and of other vertebrated Animals, found on the left Bank of the Iraweldi|journal=Transactions of the Geological Society of London|series=2|volume=2|pages=369–375|url=https://www.biodiversitylibrary.org/item/111778#page/389/mode/1up}}</ref> The same year, French naturalists [[Jean-Baptiste Croizet]] and [[A. Jobert]] erected another species ''Mastodon arvernensis'', naming it after the French region [[Auvergne]] and giving it the common name "Auvergne mastodon."<ref>{{cite book|last1=Croizet|first1=Jean=Baptiste|last2=Jobert|first2=A.|year=1828|title=Recherches sur les ossements fossiles du département du Puy-de-Dôme|publisher=Chez les principaux libraires|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=AsI0NrLhCZwC&printsec=frontcover#v=onepage&q&f=false}}</ref>
In 1832, German naturalist [[Johann Jakob Kaup]] established the species ''Tetracaulodon longirostre'',<ref>{{cite journal|last=Kaup|first=Johann Jakob|year=1832|title=Ueber zwei Fragmente eines Unterkiefers von Mastodon angustidens Cuv., nach welchen diese Art in die Gattung Tetracaulodon Godmann gehört|journal=Isis|pages=628–631|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=-WNEAAAAcAAJ&pg=PA627#v=onepage&q&f=false}}</ref> which later was reclassified as ''Mastodon longirostris''.<ref name="sivalensis">{{cite book|last1=Falconer|first1=Hugh|last2=Cautley|first2=Proby Thomas|year=1846|title=Fauna antiqua sivalensis, being the fossil zoology of the Sewalik Hills, in the north of India|publisher=Smith, Elder and Co|url=https://www.biodiversitylibrary.org/item/124939#page/7/mode/1up}}</ref> In 1834, American naturalist [[Isaac Hays]] established that the proboscidean teeth from [[Piedmont]], Italy, attributed by Italian naturalist [[Stefano Borson]] to ''Mastodon giganteum'', belonged to a different species based on dental morphology. He determined that it may have belonged to a different species, giving from Borson the name ''Mastodon borsoni''.<ref name="hays">{{cite journal|last=Hays|first=Isaac|year=1834|title=Descriptions of the specimens of inferior maxillary bones of mastodons in the cabinet of the American Philosophical Society, with remarks on the genus Tetracaulodon (Godman)|journal=Transactions of the American Philosophical Society|volume=4|pages=317–339|url=https://www.biodiversitylibrary.org/item/79816#page/375/mode/1up}}</ref> The English naturalist [[Proby Cautley]] erected an additional species ''M. Sivalensis'' in 1836 based on the proportions of a tooth from the [[Siwalik Hills]].<ref>{{cite journal|last=Cautley|first=Proby|year=1836|title=Note on the teeth of the Mastodon à dents etroites of the Siwàlik Hills|journal=The Journal of the Asiatic Society of Bengal|pages=294–296|url=https://www.biodiversitylibrary.org/item/114404#page/346/mode/1up}}</ref>
Several genera were erected for European "''Mastodon''" species, but most 19th century naturalists did not recognize them as distinct. In 1836, German zoologist [[Hermann Burmeister]] established the genus ''[[Gomphotherium]]'', diagnosing it as an extinct proboscidean with tusks in both jaws, but he did not specify any species that belonged to the genus.<ref>{{cite book|last=Burmeister|first=Hermann|year=1836|title=Handbuch der Naturgeschichte. Zum Gebrauch bei vorlesungen|publisher=Theodor Johann Christian Friedrich Enslin|url=https://www.biodiversitylibrary.org/item/179277#page/843/mode/1up}}</ref> Apparently unaware of the prior genus name, Falconer and Cautley established the subgenus name ''Trilophodon'' in 1846 for some species of ''Mastodon''. In the same journal in 1847, the species previously referred to ''Mastodon'' by Clift were transferred to ''Elephas'' by Falconer and Cautley, who also erected the subgenus name ''[[Stegodon]]''. They also established that the teeth assigned to a "''M. minutus''" were really just teeth of a young ''M. angustidens'', effectively making the former a synonym. Falconer and Cautley also wrote that remains attributed by Cuvier to "''M. Humboldtii''" can instead be assigned to the other species ''M. Andium'', turning the former species into a synonym.<ref name="sivalensis"/> In 1855, [[Auguste Aymard]] created the genus name ''[[Anancus]]'' for the species ''A. macroplus'',<ref>{{cite journal|last=Aymard|first=Auguste|year=1855|title=Notice géologique sur le cratère de Coupet et sur son gisement de gemmes et d'ossements fossiles|journal=Annales de la Societé d'Agriculture, Sciences, Arts et Commerce du Puy|volume=19|pages=497–517|url=https://www.biodiversitylibrary.org/item/24190#page/505/mode/1up}}</ref> which was synonymized by French paleontologist [[Édouard Lartet]] with ''M. arvernensis'' in 1859.<ref>{{cite journal|last=Lartet|first=Édouard|year=1859|title=Sur la dentition des proboscidiens fossiles(Dinothérium, Mastodontes et Eléphants) et sur la distribution géographique et stratigraphique de leurs débris en Europe|journal=Bulletin de la Société géologique de France|series=2|volume=16|pages=469–515|url=https://www.biodiversitylibrary.org/item/239295#page/501/mode/1up}}</ref> In 1857, Falconer erected the subgenus ''[[Tetralophodon]]'' for the species ''M. arvernensis'', ''M. longirostris'', and ''M. sivalensis''.<ref>{{cite journal|last=Falconer|first=Hugh|year=1857|title=On the species of mastodon and elephant ocurring in the fossil state in Great Britain Part 1. Mastodon.|journal=Quarterly Journal of the geological Society of London|volume=13|pages=307–360|url=https://www.biodiversitylibrary.org/item/109614#page/489/mode/1up}}</ref>
In 1844, British naturalist [[Richard Owen]] established an Australian species ''M. australis'' based on an inland molar that seemed to resemble those of typical "''Mastodon''" species rather than other large marsupials like ''[[Diprotodon]]'' or ''[[Nototherium]]''.<ref>{{cite journal|last=Owen|first=Richard|year=1844|title=Description of a Fossil Molar Tooth of a ''Mastodon'' discovered by Count Strzlecki in Australia|journal=The Annals and Magazine of Natural History |volume=14|issue=91|page=268–271|url=https://www.biodiversitylibrary.org/item/71833#page/282/mode/1up}}</ref> Along with "''Notelephas australis''" in 1882, it is possible that proboscidean remains may have been transported by ocean into the Australian mainland, but this explanation fails to explain why the "''M. australis''" molar, now lost, was found inland. As a result, "''M. australis''" and "''N. australis''" remain unresolved enigmas.<ref>{{cite book|editor-last=Ebach|editor-first=Malte C.|last=Beck|first=Robin M.|year=2016|title=Handbook of Australasian Biogeography|chapter=The biogeographical history of non-marine mammaliaforms in the Sahul region|url=https://www.researchgate.net/publication/282009283_The_biogeographical_history_of_non-marine_mammaliaforms_in_the_Sahul_region}}</ref>
In 1856, French paleontologists [[Jean Albert Gaudry]] and Lartet erected an Asian species ''M. pentelicus''.<ref>{{cite journal|last1=Gaudry|first1=Jean Albert|last2=Lartet|first2=Édouard|year=1856|title=Résultats des recherches paléontologiques entreprises dans l’Attique sous les auspices de l’Académie|journal=Comptes Rendus de l’Académie des Sciences de Paris|volume=43|pages=271–274|url=https://www.biodiversitylibrary.org/item/16553#page/283/mode/1up}}</ref> German paleontologist [[Johann Andreas Wagner]] established another proboscidean species ''M. atticus'' in 1857.<ref>{{cite journal|last=Wagner|first=Johann Andreas|year=1857|title=neue Beiträge zur Kenntniss der fossilen Säugethierüberreste von Pikermi|journal=Zeitschrift für die gesammten Naturwissenschaft|volume=10|pages=534–536|url=https://www.biodiversitylibrary.org/item/97829#page/548/mode/1up}}</ref> Lartet later erected another European proboscidean species ''M. pyrenaicus'' in 1859.<ref>{{cite journal|last1=Lartet|first1=Édouard|year=1859|title=Sur la dentition des Proboscidiens fossiles et sur la distribution géographique et stratigraphique de leurs débris en Europe|journal=Bulletin de la Société géologique de France|series=2|volume=16|pages=469–515|url=https://www.biodiversitylibrary.org/item/239295#page/501/mode/1up}}</ref> Falconer established the name ''Mastodon pandionis'' in 1868 based on fossil molars from India.<ref>{{cite book|last=Falconer|first=Hugh|year=1868|title=Palæontological Memoirs and Notes of the Late Hugh Falconer: Fauna Antiqua Sivalensis|section=Mastodon (Triloph.) Pandionis. Description by Dr. Falconer of Fossil Molars from the Deccan, presented by Colonel Sykes to the India House Collection|publisher=R. Hardwicke|pages=124–126|url=https://www.biodiversitylibrary.org/item/104175#page/220/mode/1up|isbn=112-0-015839}}</ref>
In 1877, Michael Vacek pointed out that certain proboscideans had "zygolophodont" dentitions as opposed to more "bunolophodont" dentitions. Establishing differences in dental morphologies for European species, he classified some species like ''M. tapiroides'' into the ''[[Zygolophodon]]'' subgenus and other species like ''M. angustidens'' into the ''Bunolophodon'' subgenus.<ref>{{cite journal|last=Michael|first=Vacek|year=1877|title=Ueber österreichische Mastodonten und ihre Beziehungen zu den Mastodon-Arten Europa's|journal=Abhandlungen der Kaiserlich-Königlichen Geologischen Reichsanstalt|volume=7|pages=1–47|url=https://www.biodiversitylibrary.org/item/120876#page/331/mode/1up}}</ref>
Many Eurasian proboscidean species remained classified to the genus ''Mastodon'' for the rest of the 19th century while the other genus names like ''Trilophodon'', ''Tetralophodon'', and ''Anancus'' were considered synonyms of ''Mastodon'' by [[Richard Lydekker]] in 1886. He also established another species ''M. cautleyi'' the same year. Lydekker also recognized that ''M. turiciensis'' took taxonomic priority over ''M. tapiroides''.<ref name="lydekker">{{cite book|last=Lydekker|first=Richard|year=1886|title=Catalogue of the fossil Mammalia in the British museum, (Natural History): Part IV. Containing the Order Ungulata, Suborder Proboscidea|publisher=Order of the Trustees, London|url=https://www.biodiversitylibrary.org/item/125734#page/44/mode/1up}}</ref>
French paleontologist [[René Fourtau]] erected two proboscidean species from [[Wadi Moghara]], Egypt named ''M. spenceri'' and ''M. angustidens var. libyca'' in 1918–1920.<ref>{{cite book|last=Fourtau|first=René|year=1920|title=Contribution a l'Étude Vertébrés Miocènes de l'Égypte|publisher=Government Press, Cairo|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=y29aAAAAYAAJ&printsec=frontcover#v=onepage&q&f=false}}</ref><ref name="libyca">{{cite journal|last1=Sanders|first1=William J.|last2=Miller|first2=Ellen R.|year=2002|title=New proboscideans from the early Miocene of Wadi Moghara, Egypt|journal=Journal of Vertebrate Paleontology|volume=22|issue=2|pages=388–404|doi=10.1671/0272-4634(2002)022[0388:NPFTEM]2.0.CO;2}}</ref>
=== Early American taxonomic history ===
[[File:Skeleton Missouri Leviathan Drawing.jpg|thumb|left|Colored [[lithograph]] of the "''Missourium''" (= ''Mammut'') skeleton, ca. 1845]]
Throughout the 19th century, the proboscidean taxon was plagued with major taxonomic issues in North America. Many species names erected based on ''M. americanum'' remains were erected. As a result, ''M. americanum'' has many synonymous names. The issue of synonymous species names were especially apparent in the first half of the 19th century.<ref name="osborn"/>
In 1830, American naturalist [[John Davidson Godman]] created the genus ''Tetracaulodon'' plus its species ''T. Mastodontoideum'' based on what he determined to be differences between it and ''Mastodon'' based on the skull and dentition.<ref>{{cite journal|last=Godman|first=John Davidson|year=1830|title=Description of a New Genus and New Species of Extinct Mammiferous Quadruped|journal=Transactions of the American Philosophical Society|volume=3|url=https://www.biodiversitylibrary.org/page/24785763#page/532/mode/1up}}</ref> Both [[Richard Harlan]] and [[William Cooper (conchologist)|William Cooper]] pointed out that except for the tusks, all other characteristics of the specimens were consistent with ''M. giganteum''. They therefore argued that there was no reason to assume that the tusks were not just individual variations, a view followed also by [[George William Featherstonhaugh]]. Isaac Hays comparatively defended Godman's taxon, which led to a bitter debate regarding the validity of the genus amongst American naturalists.<ref name="tetracaulodon">{{cite journal|last=Gerstner|first=Patsy A.|year=1970|title=Vertebrate Paleontology, an Early Nineteenth-Century Transatlantic Science|journal=Journal of the History of Biology|volume=3|number=1|pages=137–148|url=https://www.jstor.org/stable/4330534}}</ref>
The history of showman [[Albert C. Koch]] and ''Mammut'' fossils began as early as the summer of 1838 when he learned from an informant Mr. Wash that a farmer near the [[Bourbeuse River]] in [[Missouri]] attempted to obtain suitable supplies by improving his spring but accidentally came across a few large-sized bones. The locality of the site as discussed by Koch is not well-known in the modern day. Upon seeing the bones in October, he lamented that the bones began to break and deteriorate. He decided to excavate the site, coming across what he thought was a "kill site" of ancient Native Americans having burned a proboscidean. He speculated that the hunters may have had also hurled stones at it to kill it. Possibly, Koch may have also thought that the animal was carnivorous. The showman also found associated associated remains of stone arrowheads and [[tomahawk]]s, leading him to believe that the extinct proboscideans and Native Americans coexisted with each other for some time.<ref name="koch">{{cite journal|last=McMillan|first=R. Bruce|year=2022|title=Albert C. Koch's Missourium and the debate over the contemporaneity of humans and the Pleistocene megafauna of North America|journal=Earth Sciences History|volume=41|issue=2|pages=410–439|doi=10.17704/1944-6187-41.2.410}}</ref>
Koch's claim that humans and extinct proboscideans were contemporaneous generated controversy amongst other researchers for the next couple of decades. The Native American artifacts were eventually deposited to the [[Natural History Museum, Berlin]], and future studies revealed that the Missouri locality where the artifacts and fossils were found was not an instance of human-extinct megafaunal coexistence. Two explanations for the objects being found at the same locality but not indicating coexistence were Native Americans throwing objects into springs to appease who they believed were residential spirits that sink into ground levels with the fossils and the artifacts themselves being younger than the fossils with ages dating back to the [[Archaic period (North America)]].<ref name="koch"/>
[[File:Em - Mammut americanum - 3.jpg|thumb|''M. americanum'' skeleton, [[British Museum of Natural History]]. The skeleton was initially assembled by [[Albert C. Koch]] as "''Missourium''" or "''Leviathan''", both now synonymous with ''Mammut''.]]
Koch announced in the November 12, 1838 edition of the ''Daily Commercial Bulletin'' newspaper for St. Louis that he found "mammoth" (''M. americanum'') fossils from the Bourbeuse River.<ref name="koch"/> The next summer in 1839, he traveled a few miles south of [[St. Louis]], Missouri to a salt spring site named [[Sulphur Springs, Missouri|Sulphur Springs]]. The site today is known as Kimmswick and is preserved as the [[Mastodon State Historic Site]]. After arriving at the site, he conducted excavations on land belonging to Captain Palmer & Company. He collected mostly fossils belonging to ''M. americanum'' and classified one skull as belonging to the newly erected genus plus species ''Missourium kochii'', naming it in honor of the state of Missouri.<ref name="koch2">{{cite journal|last=McMillan|first=R. Bruce|year=2010|title=The Discovery of Fossil Vertebrates on Missouri's Western Frontier|journal=Earth Sciences History|volume=29|issue=1|pages=26–51|doi=10.17704/eshi.29.1.j034662534721751}}</ref><ref name="osborn"/> In his 1840 report, he hypothesized that ''Missourium'' was much larger than an elephant, had horizontal tusks plus trunks, and occupied aquatic habitats. He also said that he recovered fossils of ''Mastodon'' from the same locality.<ref name="koch"/>
The showman later learned about additional fossils recovered from a spring on the [[Pomme de Terre River (Missouri)|Pomme de Terre River]] in western Missouri by a farmer's laborer. Koch traveled to the site and soon was given permission to dig up the fossils in a three-month project in 1840. He acquired fossils of what he believed were of the "''Missourium''" or "''Missouri Leviathan''" (named by 1841) and believed still that it inhabited water banks as proven by the fossils' positions.<ref name="koch"/> Koch had enough fossils to assemble a mounted skeleton of the "''Missouri Leviathan''" and briefly exhibited it at St. Louis. He sold his museum and took the "''Missourium''" skeleton on a nationwide tour to cities of [[New Orleans]], [[Louisville]], and Philadelphia before going to Europe to exhibit it in [[London]], Great Britain and in [[Dublin]], Ireland. During the exhibition in Philadelphia, [[Paul Beck Goddard]] and Harlan determined that the bones actually simply belonged to ''Mastodon giganteus''. In November of 1843, he sold the skeleton to the [[British Museum of Natural History]] for £1,300, where it was properly reassembled by Owen and resides in the museum to the modern day.<ref name="koch2"/> Whether Koch knew all along that ''Missourium'' was actually just ''Mastodon'' is uncertain, but he eventually admitted in 1857 that the synonymy was true.<ref name="koch"/>
The validities of both ''Tetracaulodon'' and ''Missourium'' were rejected by Owen in 1842, although he retained the former name informally.<ref>{{cite journal|last=Owen|first=Richard|year=1842|title=Report on the Missourium now exhibiting at the Egyptian Hall|journal=Proceedings of the Geological Society of London|volume=3|number=2|pages=689–695|url=https://www.biodiversitylibrary.org/item/96958#page/717/mode/1up}}</ref> By 1869, American paleontologist [[Joseph Leidy]] determined that ''Mastodon americanus'' is the senior species synonym and listed ''M. giganteum'' as a junior synonym. He also listed ''Mammut'', ''Harpagmotherium'', ''Mastotherium'', ''Missourium'', and ''Leviathan'' as synonyms of ''Mastodon''. He also noted that ''M. americanum'' as a species was highly variable in morphology.<ref>{{cite book|last=Leidy|first=Joseph|year=1869|title=The extinct mammalian fauna of Dakota and Nebraska : Including an account of some allied forms from other localities, together with a synopsis of the mammalian remains of North America|publisher=J.B. Lippincott|url=https://www.biodiversitylibrary.org/item/60918#page/398/mode/1up}}</ref><ref name="utah">{{cite journal|last=Miller|first=Wade E.|year=1987|title=Mammut americanum, Utah's First Record of the American Mastodon|journal=Journal of Paleontology|volume=61|number=1|pages=168-183|url=https://www.jstor.org/stable/1305142}}</ref>
=== Warren Mastodon ===
[[File:Mastodon giganteus Mammut americanum skeleton sketch.png|thumb|"''Mastodon giganteus''" (= ''Mammut americanum'') skeleton as depicted in 1852. The individual skeleton is informally named "Warren Mastodon" after [[John Collins Warren]].]]
4 years after the "Peale's Mastodon" was auctioned off, [[John Collins Warren]] wrote about the discovery of a complete skeleton of "''M. giganteus''" in his monograph ''The Mastodon Giganteus of North America'' in 1852. He referenced that previously, it was ''M. angustidens'' that was better known despite the earlier history of M. giganteus because well-preserved fossils dating to the [[Miocene]] were found in France. He said that ''M. giganteus'' differed in geological position from ''M. angustidens'' and that remains of the former were recovered from the US states of Kentucky, [[Mississippi]], Missouri, and [[South Carolina]]. According to Warren, in a dry summer of 1845 near Newburgh, Nathaniel Brewster employed laborers to remove [[lacustrine deposits]] to fertilize the neighboring fields. They dug slightly deep until they accidentally came across a hard object that they were not able to immediately identify. The proprietor's son William C. Brewster, his son-in-law Mr. Weeks, and some assistants came to observe with a large number of other spectators the fossil. The laborers rapidly exhumed the bones, uncovering a {{cvt|4|ft}} long [[cranium]] with a distorted lower jaw plus bones of the [[vertebral column]], tail, [[pelvis]], [[rib]]s, and tusks in mostly natural positions of being next to each other.<ref name="warren2">{{cite book|last=Warren|first=John Collin|year=1852|title=The Mastodon giganteus of North America|section=Geological situation and causes of preservation|publisher=John Wilson and Son|pages=154–167|url=https://www.biodiversitylibrary.org/item/126175#page/174/mode/1up}}</ref><ref name="warren3">{{cite book|last=Warren|first=John Collin|year=1852|title=The Mastodon giganteus of North America|section=Discovery of the skeleton|publisher=John Wilson and Son|pages=4–7|url=https://www.biodiversitylibrary.org/item/126175#page/24/mode/1up}}</ref><ref name="AMNH">{{cite journal|last=Horenstein|first=Sidney|year=2008|title=New York City Mastodons: Big Apple Tusks|journal=Evolution: Education and Outreach|volume=1|pages=204–209|doi=10.1007/s12052-008-0042-y}}</ref>
By the end of the 2nd day of labor, they recovered a mostly complete skeleton except for a few components, some of which were recovered later. Unlike previous proboscidean fossils, the skeleton was almost perfectly preserved and was of a brown color rather than a black one. The skeleton, deposited from Nathaniel Brewster's stables, was cleaned and dried then given to physician Dr. Prime, who articulated the remains. The skeleton was exhibited in [[New York City]] as well as other New England towns for the next three to four months. The bones afterward came in possession of Warren, who with his friend, physician [[Nathaniel B. Shurtleff]], disarticulated and rearranged the bones for nearly four weeks.<ref name="warren2"/><ref name="newyork">{{cite book|last1=Hartnagel|first1=Chris Andrew|last2=Bishop|first2=Sherman Chauncey|year=1922|title=The Mastodons, Mammoths and Other Pleistocene Mammals of New York State: Being a Descriptive Record of All Known Occurrences|publisher=University of the State of New York|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=9rxRAQAAIAAJ&printsec=frontcover#v=onepage&q&f=false}}</ref>
Also of note were the contents that were buried with the skeleton, which composed of a mass substance of crushed branches, which were initially ignored. Warren stated that a few experts like Prime confirmed that they were large portions of vegetative substances such as coniferous tree twigs or shrubs consumed by the individual proboscidean. Therefore, ''M. giganteus'' was confirmed outright to be an herbivore according to Warren. He also wrote about apparent evidence of hair of the species previously found in [[Montgomery, New York]] and described by other researchers, although he did not elaborate further on his opinions on the matter.<ref name="warren4">{{cite book|last=Warren|first=John Collin|year=1852|title=The Mastodon giganteus of North America|section=Food and hair|publisher=John Wilson and Son|pages=144–149|url=https://www.biodiversitylibrary.org/item/126175#page/164/mode/1up}}</ref>
After Warren's death in 1856, under his will, the mammutid skeleton were sent to his family while Warren's bones were delivered to the [[Harvard Medical School]]. The medical school later swapped the skeletons with Warren's family. The "Warren mastodon" was kept in a small exhibition room in [[Harvard University]] for about half a century. The skeleton was sold to the American financier [[J. P. Morgan]] for $30,000 in 1906 and subsequently donated to the [[American Museum of Natural History]] after he agreed to fulfill American paleontologist [[Henry Fairfield Osborn]]'s request to cover the costs on behalf of the museum. Today, the "Warren Mastodon" is at the entrance of the Hall of Mammals exhibit in the natural history museum.<ref name="monsterafter">{{cite book|last=Semonin|first=Paul|year=2000|title=American Monster: How the Nation's First Prehistoric Creature Became a Symbol of National Identity|chapter=Afterword: The Myth of Wild Nature|publisher=NYU Press|pages=392–411}}</ref><ref name="AMNH"/>
=== American wastebasket history ===
In the second half of the 19th century, the wastebasket taxon status of "''Mastodon''" carried over to North America and South America. This meant that many fossil proboscidean species of the two continents that are now classified to distant genera were lumped into the genus ''Mastodon'' at some point.<ref name="osborn"/> Leidy erected a proboscidean species ''Mastodon'' (''Tetralophodon'') ''mirificus'' from the [[Pliocene]] deposit of [[Niobrara, Nebraska|Niobrara]], [[Nebraska]] in 1858.<ref>{{cite journal|last=Leidy|first=Joseph|year=1858|title=Notice of remains of extinct vertebrata, from the Valley of the Niobrara River, collected during the Exploring Expedition of 1857, in Nebraska, under the command of Lieut. G. K. Warren, U. S. Top. Eng., by Dr. F. V. Hayden, Geologist to the Expedition|journal=Proceedings of the Academy of Natural Sciences of Philadelphia|volume=10|url=https://www.biodiversitylibrary.org/page/47535620#page/40/mode/1up}}</ref> American paleontologist [[Edward Drinker Cope]] established three additional North American proboscidean species three decades later that he lumped into ''Mastodon'': ''M. proavus'' in 1873,<ref>{{cite book|last=Cope|first=Edward Drinker|year=1873|title=Synopsis of new vertebrata from the Tertiary of Colorado, obtained during the summer of 1873|publisher=U.S. Government Printing Office|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=Rz4sAAAAYAAJ&q=proavus#v=onepage&q&f=false}}</ref> ''M. productus'' in 1874,<ref>{{cite journal|last=Cope|first=Edward Drinker|year=1874|title=On a New Mastodon and Rodent|journal=Proceedings of the Academy of Natural Sciences of Philadelphia|volume=26|pages=221–223|url=https://www.biodiversitylibrary.org/item/17720#page/249/mode/1up}}</ref> and ''M. euhypodon'' in 1884.<ref>{{cite journal|last=Cope|first=Edward Drinker|year=1884|title=The Mastodons of North America|journal=The American naturalist|volume=18|page=524–526|url=https://www.biodiversitylibrary.org/item/130575#page/555/mode/1up}}</ref> Leidy followed up by erecting ''M. floridanus'' in 1884.<ref>{{cite journal|last=Leidy|first=Joseph|year=1886|title=Mastodon and Llama from Florida|journal=Proceedings of the Academy of Natural Sciences of Philadelphia|volume=38|pages=11–12|url=https://www.biodiversitylibrary.org/item/84754#page/13/mode/1up}}</ref> Argentine paleontologist [[Florentino Ameghino]] erected multiple South American species that he determined belonged to ''Mastodon'', notably the now-valid ''M. platensis'', in 1888.<ref>{{cite journal|last=Ameghino|first=Florentino|year=1888|title=Rápidas diagnosis de algunos mamíferos fósiles nuevos de la República Argentina|journal=Obras Completas, Buenos Aires|volume=5|pages=469–480}}</ref><ref name="notiomastodon">{{cite journal|last1=Mothé|first1=Dimila|last2=Avilla|first2=Leonardo S.|last3=Cozzuol|first3=Mário|last4=Winck|first4=Gisele R.|year=2012|title=Taxonomic revision of the Quaternary gomphotheres (Mammalia: Proboscidea: Gomphotheriidae) from the South American lowlands|journal=Quaternary International|volume=276–277|pages=2–7|doi=10.1016/j.quaint.2011.05.018}}</ref>
In addition to still-valid species names, several synonymous or dubious species names ultimately belonging to different genera were erected within the Americas as well throughout the 19th century.<ref name="notiomastodon"/><ref name="rhynchotherium">{{cite journal|last1=Lucas|first1=Spencer G.|last2=Morgan|first2=Gary S.|year=2008|title=Taxonomy of Rhynchotherium (Mammalia, Proboscidea) from the Miocene-Pliocene of North America|journal=New Mexico Museum of Natural History and Science Bulletin|volume=44|pages=71–87|url=https://www.researchgate.net/publication/281863115_Taxonomy_of_Rhynchotherium_Mammalia_Proboscidea_from_the_Miocene-Pliocene_of_North_America}}</ref><ref>{{cite journal|last=Dalquest|first=Walter W.|year=1975|title=Vertebrate fossils from the Blanco local fauna of Texas|journal=Occasional Papers of the Museum, Texas Tech University|number=30|pages=1–52|url=https://www.biodiversitylibrary.org/item/241967#page/1/mode/1up}}</ref>
=== 20th century proboscidean revisions ===
In 1902, American paleontologist [[Oliver Perry Hay]] listed ''Mammut'' as the prioritized genus name given its status as the oldest genus name, making ''Mastodon'', ''Tetracaulodon'', and ''Missourium'' classified as junior synonyms. He also established ''M. americanum'' as the type species.<ref name="mammut"/> The genus name ''Mastodon'' was subsequently abandoned by many American paleontologists in favor of ''Mammut'' within the early 20th century such as [[Theodore Sherman Palmer]] in 1904, [[Richard Swann Lull]] in 1908, and various others. Meanwhile, the term "mastodon" still saw usage as a common name.<ref name="etymology">{{cite journal|last=Palmer|first=Theodore Sherman|year=1904|title=A List of the Genera and Families of Mammals|journal=North American Fauna|issue=23|doi=10.3996/nafa.23.0001 |url=https://www.biodiversitylibrary.org/item/83341#page/405/mode/1up|doi-access=free}}</ref><ref>{{cite journal|last=Lull|first=Richard Swann|year=1908|title=The Evolution of the Elephant|journal=American Journal of Science|series=4|volume=25|pages=169–212|url=https://www.biodiversitylibrary.org/page/40227522#page/193/mode/1up}}</ref><ref>{{cite book|last=Hay|first=Oliver P.|year=1923|title=The Pleistocene of North America and its vertebrated animals from the states east of the Mississippi River and from the Canadian provinces east of longitude 95°|publisher=Carnegie Institution of Washington|number=322|url=https://www.biodiversitylibrary.org/item/66297#page/4/mode/1up}}</ref><ref name="osborn"/> Osborn in 1936 expressed his disdain for the genus name ''Mammut'', who recognized the recent usage of the name but considered it to be a "barbaric term" that would "rob Cuvier of his clear conception of grinding tooth structure" and be "gross injustice to the founder of vertebrate palæontology." He suggested that taxonomic priority of ''Mammut'' be disregarded in favor of the at-the-time popular ''Mastodon'' on the basis of his subjective opinion that Cuvier's name is more fitting.<ref name="osborn"/>
Osborn in his long time of specialization on fossil proboscideans favored many genus names (most of which were erected by other paleontologists) that most species formerly classified to ''Mastodon''/''Mammut'' have since been reclassified to, such as ''Anancus'', ''Trilophodon'' (= ''Gomphotherium''), ''Zygolophodon'', ''[[Rhynchotherium]]'', ''[[Cuvieronius]]'', ''[[Stegomastodon]]'', ''[[Notiomastodon]]'', ''[[Stegolophodon]]'', and ''[[Choerolophodon]]''. As a result of the revisions, he favored only one species classified in ''Mastodon'', ''M. americanus''.<ref name="osborn"/> The [[Amebelodontidae|amebelodont]] ''[[Stenobelodon]]'' is the only genus erected after the early 20th century proboscidean taxonomic revisions to now include a species formerly assigned to ''Mastodon''.<ref name="stenobelodon">{{cite journal|last=Lambert|first=W. David|year=2023|title=Implications of discoveries of the shovel-tusked gomphothere Konobelodon (Proboscidea, Gomphotheriidae) in Eurasia for the status of Amebelodon with a new genus of shovel-tusked gomphothere, Stenobelodon|journal=Journal of Vertebrate Paleontology|volume=43|issue=1|doi=10.1080/02724634.2023.2252021}}</ref> The proboscidean genera outside of ''Mammut'' had their own complicated taxonomic revisions until most species lumped into the ''Mastodon'' wastebin eventually had solidified taxonomic affinities to the modern day.<ref>{{cite journal|last1=Mothé|first1=Dimila|last2=Avilla|first2=Leonardo S.|last3=Cozzuol|first3=Mario A.|year=2012|title=The South American Gomphotheres (Mammalia, Proboscidea, Gomphotheriidae): Taxonomy, Phylogeny, and Biogeography|journal=Journal of Mammalian Evolution|volume=20|pages=23–32|doi=10.1007/s10914-012-9192-3}}</ref><ref name="notiomastodon"/><ref name="rhynchotherium"/> Today, the genera that include species formerly classified into ''Mastodon'' include ''Gomphotherium'' (''G. angustidens'', ''G. pyrenaicum'', ''G. productum'', ''G. libycum''),<ref>{{cite journal|last1=Wang|first1=Shi-Qi|last2=Duangkrayom|first2=Jaroon|last3=Yang|first3=Xiang-Wen|year=2015|title=Occurrence of the Gomphotherium angustidens group in China, based on a revision of Gomphotherium connexum (Hopwood, 1935) and Gomphotherium shensiensis Chang and Zhai, 1978: continental correlation of Gomphotherium species across the Palearctic|journal=Paläontologische Zeitschrift|volume=89|pages=1073–1086|doi=10.1007/s12542-015-0270-8}}</ref><ref>{{cite journal|last=Göhlich|first=Ursula B.|year=2010|title=The Proboscidea (Mammalia) from the Miocene of Sandelzhausen (southern Germany)|journal=Paläontologische Zeitschrift|volume=84|number=1|pages=163–204|doi=10.1007/s12542-010-0053-1}}</ref><ref>{{cite book|last=Sanders|first=William J.|year=2023|title=Evolution and Fossil Record of African Proboscidea|publisher=CRC Press}}</ref> ''Zygolophodon'' (''Z. turicensis'', ''Z. proavus''),<ref>{{cite journal|last1=Duangkrayom|first1=Jaroon|last2=Wang|first2=Shi-Qi|last3=Deng|first3=Tao|last4=Jintasakul|first4=Pratueng|year=2016|title=The first Neogene record of Zygolophodon (Mammalia, Proboscidea) in Thailand: implications for the mammutid evolution and dispersal in Southeast Asia|journal=Journal of Paleontology|volume=91|number=1|pages=179–193|doi=10.1017/jpa.2016.143}}</ref><ref name="neogene">{{cite journal|last1=von Koenigswald|first1=Wighart|last2=Wigda|first2=Chris|last3=Göhlich|first3=Ursula B.|year=2023|title=New mammutids (Proboscidea) from the Clarendonian and Hemphillian of Oregon – a survey of Mio-Pliocene mammutids from North America|journal=The Bulletin of the Museum of Natural History of the University of Oregon|number=30|url=https://journals.oregondigital.org/nat_history/article/view/6004}}</ref> ''Cuvieronius'' (''C. hyodon''),<ref>{{cite journal|last1=Mead|first1=Jim I.|last2=Arroyo-Cabrales|first2=Joaquin|last3=Swift|first3=Sandra L.|year=2019|title=Late Pleistocene Mammuthus and Cuvieronius (proboscidea) from Térapa, Sonora, Mexico|journal=Quaternary Science Reviews|volume=223|doi=10.1016/j.quascirev.2019.105949}}</ref> ''Stegodon'' (''S. elephantoides''),<ref>{{cite journal|last=Sein|first=Chit|year=2020|title=A New Stegolophodon (Proboscidea, Mammalia) from the Irrawaddy Formation of Myanmar|journal=Open Journal of Geology|volume=10|number=8|doi=10.4236/ojg.2020.108039}}</ref> ''Stegolophodon'' (''S. latidens'', ''S. cautleyi''),<ref>{{cite journal|last1=Samiullah|first1=Khizar|last2=Yasin|first2=Riffat|last3=Jabeen|first3=Farhat|last4=Ahmad|first4=Shahzad|last5=Yaqub|first5=Sajid |last6=Feroz|first6=Khurram|last7=Akhtar|first7=Saleem|last8=Akhtar|first8=Muhammad|year=2015|title=Stegolophodon cautleyi from padri (Dhok Pathan Formation) Middle Siwaliks, Jhelum, Punjab, Pakistan|journal=International Journal of Biosciences|volume=6|number=9|pages=74–81|doi=10.12692/ijb/6.9.74-81|url=https://www.researchgate.net/publication/281930913_Stegolophodon_cautleyi_from_padri_Dhok_Pathan_Formation}},</ref> ''Anancus'' (''A. avernensis'', ''A. sivalensis''), ''Tetralophodon'' (''T. longirostris''), ''Choerolophodon'' (''C. pentelici''), ''Stegomastodon'' (''S. mirificus''), ''Rhynchotherium'' ("''R.''" ''euhypodon''),<ref name="rhynchotherium"/> ''Stenobelodon'' (''S. floridanus''),<ref name="stenobelodon"/> and ''Notiomastodon'' (''N. platensis'').<ref name="notiomastodon"/>
Other North American proboscidean species now classified to ''Mammut'' were erected during the rigorous proboscidean revisions. In 1921, Osborn created the species name ''Mastodon matthewi'' based on distinct molars from the [[Snake Creek Formation]] of western Nebraska, naming it in honor of [[William Diller Matthew]]. He also erected another species ''M. merriami'' from the [[Thousand Creek Formation]] in Nevada, which was eventually synonymized with ''Zygolophodon proavus''.<ref>{{cite journal|last=Osborn|first=Henry Fairfield|year=1921|title=First appearance of the true mastodon in America|journal=American Museum Novitates|number=10|pages=1–6|url=https://www.biodiversitylibrary.org/page/26890426#page/135/mode/1up}}</ref><ref name="neogene"/>
== References ==
{{reflist}}' |
Unified diff of changes made by edit (edit_diff) | '@@ -310,5 +310,5 @@
In 1902, American paleontologist [[Oliver Perry Hay]] listed ''Mammut'' as the prioritized genus name given its status as the oldest genus name, making ''Mastodon'', ''Tetracaulodon'', and ''Missourium'' classified as junior synonyms. He also established ''M. americanum'' as the type species.<ref name="mammut"/> The genus name ''Mastodon'' was subsequently abandoned by many American paleontologists in favor of ''Mammut'' within the early 20th century such as [[Theodore Sherman Palmer]] in 1904, [[Richard Swann Lull]] in 1908, and various others. Meanwhile, the term "mastodon" still saw usage as a common name.<ref name="etymology">{{cite journal|last=Palmer|first=Theodore Sherman|year=1904|title=A List of the Genera and Families of Mammals|journal=North American Fauna|issue=23|doi=10.3996/nafa.23.0001 |url=https://www.biodiversitylibrary.org/item/83341#page/405/mode/1up|doi-access=free}}</ref><ref>{{cite journal|last=Lull|first=Richard Swann|year=1908|title=The Evolution of the Elephant|journal=American Journal of Science|series=4|volume=25|pages=169–212|url=https://www.biodiversitylibrary.org/page/40227522#page/193/mode/1up}}</ref><ref>{{cite book|last=Hay|first=Oliver P.|year=1923|title=The Pleistocene of North America and its vertebrated animals from the states east of the Mississippi River and from the Canadian provinces east of longitude 95°|publisher=Carnegie Institution of Washington|number=322|url=https://www.biodiversitylibrary.org/item/66297#page/4/mode/1up}}</ref><ref name="osborn"/> Osborn in 1936 expressed his disdain for the genus name ''Mammut'', who recognized the recent usage of the name but considered it to be a "barbaric term" that would "rob Cuvier of his clear conception of grinding tooth structure" and be "gross injustice to the founder of vertebrate palæontology." He suggested that taxonomic priority of ''Mammut'' be disregarded in favor of the at-the-time popular ''Mastodon'' on the basis of his subjective opinion that Cuvier's name is more fitting.<ref name="osborn"/>
-Osborn in his long time of specialization on fossil proboscideans favored many genus names (most of which were erected by other paleontologists) that most species formerly classified to ''Mastodon''/''Mammut'' have since been reclassified to, such as ''Anancus'', ''Trilophodon'' (= ''Gomphotherium''), ''Zygolophodon'', ''[[Rhynchotherium]]'', ''[[Cuvieronius]]'', ''[[Stegomastodon]]'', ''[[Notiomastodon]]'', ''[[Stegolophodon]]'', and ''[[Choerolophodon]]''. As a result of the revisions, he favored only one species classified in ''Mastodon'', ''M. americanus''.<ref name="osborn"/> The [[Amebelodontidae|amebelodont]] ''[[Stenobelodon]]'' is the only genus erected after the early 20th century proboscidean taxonomic revisions to now include a species formerly assigned to ''Mastodon''.<ref name="stenobelodon">{{cite journal|last=Lambert|first=W. David|year=2023|title=Implications of discoveries of the shovel-tusked gomphothere Konobelodon (Proboscidea, Gomphotheriidae) in Eurasia for the status of Amebelodon with a new genus of shovel-tusked gomphothere, Stenobelodon|journal=Journal of Vertebrate Paleontology|volume=43|issue=1|doi=10.1080/02724634.2023.2252021}}</ref> The proboscidean genera outside of ''Mammut'' had their own complicated taxonomic revisions until most species lumped into the ''Mastodon'' wastebin eventually had solidified taxonomic affinities to the modern day.<ref>{{cite journal|last1=Mothé|first1=Dimila|last2=Avilla|first2=Leonardo S.|last3=Cozzuol|first3=Mario A.|year=2012|title=The South American Gomphotheres (Mammalia, Proboscidea, Gomphotheriidae): Taxonomy, Phylogeny, and Biogeography|journal=Journal of Mammalian Evolution|volume=20|pages=23–32|doi=10.1007/s10914-012-9192-3}}</ref><ref name="notiomastodon"/><ref name="rhynchotherium"/> Today, the genera that include species formerly classified into ''Mastodon'' include ''Gomphotherium'' (''G. angustidens'', ''G. pyrenaicum'', ''G. productum'', ''G. libycum''),<ref>{{cite journal|last1=Wang|first1=Shi-Qi|last2=Duangkrayom|first2=Jaroon|last3=Yang|first3=Xiang-Wen|year=2015|title=Occurrence of the Gomphotherium angustidens group in China, based on a revision of Gomphotherium connexum (Hopwood, 1935) and Gomphotherium shensiensis Chang and Zhai, 1978: continental correlation of Gomphotherium species across the Palearctic|journal=Paläontologische Zeitschrift|volume=89|pages=1073–1086|doi=10.1007/s12542-015-0270-8}}</ref><ref>{{cite journal|last=Göhlich|first=Ursula B.|year=2010|title=The Proboscidea (Mammalia) from the Miocene of Sandelzhausen (southern Germany)|journal=Paläontologische Zeitschrift|volume=84|number=1|pages=163–204|doi=10.1007/s12542-010-0053-1}}</ref><ref>{{cite book|last=Sanders|first=William J.|year=2023|title=Evolution and Fossil Record of African Proboscidea|publisher=CRC Press}}</ref> ''Zygolophodon'' (''Z. turicensis'', ''Z. proavus''),<ref>{{cite journal|last1=Duangkrayom|first1=Jaroon|last2=Wang|first2=Shi-Qi|last3=Deng|first3=Tao|last4=Jintasakul|first4=Pratueng|year=2016|title=The first Neogene record of Zygolophodon (Mammalia, Proboscidea) in Thailand: implications for the mammutid evolution and dispersal in Southeast Asia|journal=Journal of Paleontology|volume=91|number=1|pages=179–193|doi=10.1017/jpa.2016.143}}</ref><ref name="neogene">{{cite journal|last1=von Koenigswald|first1=Wighart|last2=Wigda|first2=Chris|last3=Göhlich|first3=Ursula B.|year=2023|title=New mammutids (Proboscidea) from the Clarendonian and Hemphillian of Oregon – a survey of Mio-Pliocene mammutids from North America|journal=The Bulletin of the Museum of Natural History of the University of Oregon|number=30|url=https://journals.oregondigital.org/nat_history/article/view/6004}}</ref> ''Cuvieronius'' (''C. hyodon''),<ref>{{cite journal|last1=Mead|first1=Jim I.|last2=Arroyo-Cabrales|first2=Joaquin|last3=Swift|first3=Sandra L.|year=2019|title=Late Pleistocene Mammuthus and Cuvieronius (proboscidea) from Térapa, Sonora, Mexico|journal=Quaternary Science Reviews|volume=223|doi=10.1016/j.quascirev.2019.105949}}</ref> ''Stegodon'' (''S. elephantoides''), ''Stegolophodon'' (''S. latidens'', ''S. cautleyi''), ''Anancus'' (''A. avernensis'', ''A. sivalensis''), ''Tetralophodon'' (''T. longirostris''), ''Choerolophodon'' (''C. pentelici''), ''Stegomastodon'' (''S. mirificus''), ''Rhynchotherium'' ("''R.''" ''euhypodon''),<ref name="rhynchotherium"/> ''Stenobelodon'' (''S. floridanus''),<ref name="stenobelodon"/> and ''Notiomastodon'' (''N. platensis'').<ref name="notiomastodon"/>
+Osborn in his long time of specialization on fossil proboscideans favored many genus names (most of which were erected by other paleontologists) that most species formerly classified to ''Mastodon''/''Mammut'' have since been reclassified to, such as ''Anancus'', ''Trilophodon'' (= ''Gomphotherium''), ''Zygolophodon'', ''[[Rhynchotherium]]'', ''[[Cuvieronius]]'', ''[[Stegomastodon]]'', ''[[Notiomastodon]]'', ''[[Stegolophodon]]'', and ''[[Choerolophodon]]''. As a result of the revisions, he favored only one species classified in ''Mastodon'', ''M. americanus''.<ref name="osborn"/> The [[Amebelodontidae|amebelodont]] ''[[Stenobelodon]]'' is the only genus erected after the early 20th century proboscidean taxonomic revisions to now include a species formerly assigned to ''Mastodon''.<ref name="stenobelodon">{{cite journal|last=Lambert|first=W. David|year=2023|title=Implications of discoveries of the shovel-tusked gomphothere Konobelodon (Proboscidea, Gomphotheriidae) in Eurasia for the status of Amebelodon with a new genus of shovel-tusked gomphothere, Stenobelodon|journal=Journal of Vertebrate Paleontology|volume=43|issue=1|doi=10.1080/02724634.2023.2252021}}</ref> The proboscidean genera outside of ''Mammut'' had their own complicated taxonomic revisions until most species lumped into the ''Mastodon'' wastebin eventually had solidified taxonomic affinities to the modern day.<ref>{{cite journal|last1=Mothé|first1=Dimila|last2=Avilla|first2=Leonardo S.|last3=Cozzuol|first3=Mario A.|year=2012|title=The South American Gomphotheres (Mammalia, Proboscidea, Gomphotheriidae): Taxonomy, Phylogeny, and Biogeography|journal=Journal of Mammalian Evolution|volume=20|pages=23–32|doi=10.1007/s10914-012-9192-3}}</ref><ref name="notiomastodon"/><ref name="rhynchotherium"/> Today, the genera that include species formerly classified into ''Mastodon'' include ''Gomphotherium'' (''G. angustidens'', ''G. pyrenaicum'', ''G. productum'', ''G. libycum''),<ref>{{cite journal|last1=Wang|first1=Shi-Qi|last2=Duangkrayom|first2=Jaroon|last3=Yang|first3=Xiang-Wen|year=2015|title=Occurrence of the Gomphotherium angustidens group in China, based on a revision of Gomphotherium connexum (Hopwood, 1935) and Gomphotherium shensiensis Chang and Zhai, 1978: continental correlation of Gomphotherium species across the Palearctic|journal=Paläontologische Zeitschrift|volume=89|pages=1073–1086|doi=10.1007/s12542-015-0270-8}}</ref><ref>{{cite journal|last=Göhlich|first=Ursula B.|year=2010|title=The Proboscidea (Mammalia) from the Miocene of Sandelzhausen (southern Germany)|journal=Paläontologische Zeitschrift|volume=84|number=1|pages=163–204|doi=10.1007/s12542-010-0053-1}}</ref><ref>{{cite book|last=Sanders|first=William J.|year=2023|title=Evolution and Fossil Record of African Proboscidea|publisher=CRC Press}}</ref> ''Zygolophodon'' (''Z. turicensis'', ''Z. proavus''),<ref>{{cite journal|last1=Duangkrayom|first1=Jaroon|last2=Wang|first2=Shi-Qi|last3=Deng|first3=Tao|last4=Jintasakul|first4=Pratueng|year=2016|title=The first Neogene record of Zygolophodon (Mammalia, Proboscidea) in Thailand: implications for the mammutid evolution and dispersal in Southeast Asia|journal=Journal of Paleontology|volume=91|number=1|pages=179–193|doi=10.1017/jpa.2016.143}}</ref><ref name="neogene">{{cite journal|last1=von Koenigswald|first1=Wighart|last2=Wigda|first2=Chris|last3=Göhlich|first3=Ursula B.|year=2023|title=New mammutids (Proboscidea) from the Clarendonian and Hemphillian of Oregon – a survey of Mio-Pliocene mammutids from North America|journal=The Bulletin of the Museum of Natural History of the University of Oregon|number=30|url=https://journals.oregondigital.org/nat_history/article/view/6004}}</ref> ''Cuvieronius'' (''C. hyodon''),<ref>{{cite journal|last1=Mead|first1=Jim I.|last2=Arroyo-Cabrales|first2=Joaquin|last3=Swift|first3=Sandra L.|year=2019|title=Late Pleistocene Mammuthus and Cuvieronius (proboscidea) from Térapa, Sonora, Mexico|journal=Quaternary Science Reviews|volume=223|doi=10.1016/j.quascirev.2019.105949}}</ref> ''Stegodon'' (''S. elephantoides''),<ref>{{cite journal|last=Sein|first=Chit|year=2020|title=A New Stegolophodon (Proboscidea, Mammalia) from the Irrawaddy Formation of Myanmar|journal=Open Journal of Geology|volume=10|number=8|doi=10.4236/ojg.2020.108039}}</ref> ''Stegolophodon'' (''S. latidens'', ''S. cautleyi''),<ref>{{cite journal|last1=Samiullah|first1=Khizar|last2=Yasin|first2=Riffat|last3=Jabeen|first3=Farhat|last4=Ahmad|first4=Shahzad|last5=Yaqub|first5=Sajid |last6=Feroz|first6=Khurram|last7=Akhtar|first7=Saleem|last8=Akhtar|first8=Muhammad|year=2015|title=Stegolophodon cautleyi from padri (Dhok Pathan Formation) Middle Siwaliks, Jhelum, Punjab, Pakistan|journal=International Journal of Biosciences|volume=6|number=9|pages=74–81|doi=10.12692/ijb/6.9.74-81|url=https://www.researchgate.net/publication/281930913_Stegolophodon_cautleyi_from_padri_Dhok_Pathan_Formation}},</ref> ''Anancus'' (''A. avernensis'', ''A. sivalensis''), ''Tetralophodon'' (''T. longirostris''), ''Choerolophodon'' (''C. pentelici''), ''Stegomastodon'' (''S. mirificus''), ''Rhynchotherium'' ("''R.''" ''euhypodon''),<ref name="rhynchotherium"/> ''Stenobelodon'' (''S. floridanus''),<ref name="stenobelodon"/> and ''Notiomastodon'' (''N. platensis'').<ref name="notiomastodon"/>
Other North American proboscidean species now classified to ''Mammut'' were erected during the rigorous proboscidean revisions. In 1921, Osborn created the species name ''Mastodon matthewi'' based on distinct molars from the [[Snake Creek Formation]] of western Nebraska, naming it in honor of [[William Diller Matthew]]. He also erected another species ''M. merriami'' from the [[Thousand Creek Formation]] in Nevada, which was eventually synonymized with ''Zygolophodon proavus''.<ref>{{cite journal|last=Osborn|first=Henry Fairfield|year=1921|title=First appearance of the true mastodon in America|journal=American Museum Novitates|number=10|pages=1–6|url=https://www.biodiversitylibrary.org/page/26890426#page/135/mode/1up}}</ref><ref name="neogene"/>
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