The woolly mammoth and the mastodon, both extinct elephant-like creatures, share a general body plan with trunks and tusks. However, these prehistoric giants possessed distinct characteristics. Understanding their differences in physical features, diets, habitats, and evolutionary histories clarifies their unique places in Earth’s past.
Distinct Physical Features
Woolly mammoths and mastodons differed in overall size and build. Mammoths were taller with a distinctive sloping back, their highest point at the shoulders, reaching heights of 10 to 13 feet (3 to 4 meters) and weighing up to 9 tons. Mastodons were shorter and stockier, with a robust, pillar-like body, standing around 7.5 to 10 feet (2.5 to 3 meters) tall and weighing approximately 6 to 6.5 tons.
Their tusks also showed clear distinctions. Woolly mammoths had long, significantly curved tusks up to 16 feet (5 meters), sometimes even crossing. Mastodon tusks were shorter, straighter, and tapered, growing up to 8 feet long. Skull shape offered another differentiating feature; mammoths had a more domed head with a bulging bone knob, while mastodons featured flatter heads.
Hair and teeth provided further differences. Woolly mammoths had a thick, shaggy coat, well-adapted for cold climates, and sometimes a fatty hump for nutrient storage. While mastodons also had hair, it was less dense. The molars were a key difference: mammoth molars were flat and ridged, suitable for grinding grasses, similar to modern elephants. Mastodon molars, with cone-shaped cusps, were designed for crushing tougher, woody vegetation.
Different Diets and Habitats
The dietary preferences of woolly mammoths and mastodons influenced the environments they inhabited. Woolly mammoths were primarily grazers, their diet consisting mainly of grasses, sedges, and other herbaceous plants. Their ridged molars suited processing these fibrous materials found in open grasslands and tundra environments.
Woolly mammoths thrived in the cold, open steppe-tundra regions across northern North America, Europe, and Asia. Mastodons, conversely, were browsers, feeding on leaves, twigs, shrubs, and aquatic vegetation. Their cone-shaped molar cusps adapted for crushing woody plant matter. These dietary habits led mastodons to prefer forested or swampy environments, found in North and Central America.
Separate Evolutionary Paths
Despite their superficial resemblance, woolly mammoths and mastodons followed distinct evolutionary paths. Woolly mammoths (genus Mammuthus) are more closely related to modern elephants, having diverged from a common ancestor around 5 to 6 million years ago. This lineage originated in Africa, with mammoths later dispersing into Eurasia and North America.
Mastodons (genus Mammut) belong to an older branch of the proboscidean family tree, having diverged from the ancestors of modern elephants and mammoths approximately 25 to 30 million years ago. Their geographic distribution was in North and Central America. While their timelines overlapped, mastodons appeared earlier in the fossil record and largely went extinct around 10,000 to 12,000 years ago, though some isolated woolly mammoth populations persisted on islands until as recently as 4,000 years ago.