Michigan+-+The+Mastodon

=**Michigan - The Mastodon**= The mastodon is also know as //Mammut americanum//, which is its binomial nomenclature. The mastodon (as adults) were as tall as 3 meters. They weighed between 3500 and 5400 kilograms (4-6 tons). Their teeth had blunt cones and they probably used these teeth (as well as their tusks) to eat herbs and leaves of shrubs and trees. These animals are very alike to the elephants we have today. Although they were much hairier because they needed to survive in the harsh conditions of the ice age. These are not the same as the woolly mammoth though. Mastodons had straighter tusks and both the body and head of the mastodon is longer than the woolly mammoth.Its back doesn't slope like a mammoth's. Mastodon's were about the size of an Asiatic elephant of today, but it's ears were smaller than a modern elephants. They lived in the Pleistocene Epoch, Cenozoic era, and through both the Tertiary and some of the Quanternary. They lived in North America from 3.75 million years ago to 11,000 years ago. They are found most commonly in the east directly below the Great Lakes. The conditions were very icy and snowy. As the snow and ice started to melt the humans came in. It is thought that the mix of humans coming in and killing them for their meat and the earth becoming too warm for them to survive was the reason for their extinction which was approximately 11,000 years ago (though it is said that in Wrangel Island in the Arctic Sea some might have lived til up until 4000 years ago). Many Mastodons were found near sights that once held ancient lakes. Many think the animal went to go and get a drink of water and got stuck in the layer of clay under the sand. Mastodons were very large and not many animals would go near it. Without being bothered the animal must have died and the rest of its body stuck in the clay which it was buried in sand and preserved. This is only one case of finding the mastodon there were many. Many of these fossils were found but the most complete skeletons was found by Dan Fisher, a paleontologist at the University of Michigan.This was named the state fossil of Michigan in 2002 mainly because of the efforts of the students at Slauson Middle School in Ann Arbor. Michigan state fossil (n.d.) retrieved [] Mastodon (n.d.) retrieved [] Mastodons (n.d.) retrieved [] BBC (2012) American mastodon retrieved [] Lea Krystek (1996) Of mastodons, mammoths and other giants of the Pleistocene retrieved [] Patricia Chargot (n.d.) The state fossil is a giant retrieved []
 * By Cori Meyers**
 * ==//Mammut americanum//==
 * ==What did it look like?==
 * ===They are said to have looked like this:===
 * ==What time did they exist in?==
 * ==How were they preserved?==
 * ==Who found the fossil and Why is it a state fossil?==
 * ==Sources==