Below, "Little Stevie's" femur from DVL is on the left, compared to an American mastodon specimen from Ohio (again, from the Cincinnati Museum). pacificus femora to confirm this (Max's femur is incomplete). The trends we see suggest that not only do Pacific mastodons have thicker femora, but that the difference becomes more pronounced with larger body size. This is a feature we need to explore further, but our data is a bit limited. Mammut pacificus has a thicker femur for a given length. pacificus sacrals, including the one below from Diamond Valley Lake, have six. There has been one American mastodon reported with six sacrals, and another reported with four (although I have not personally seen either of these specimens), but all the other specimens for which we could get data (five of them) have five sacrals. This trend is present in every tooth position except the upper 2nd molars, although we had the best statistical support for the 3rd molars.- Mammut pacificus has six sacral vertebrae, while M. On the left below is a lower third molar from Max, and on the right is the same tooth from an American mastodon from Ohio (from the Cincinnati Museum of Natural History and Science). It was finally published last Wednesday.So, what makes the Pacific mastodon different from the American mastodon? Here are the major characters: - Mammut pacificus has narrower teeth than M. Sometime in late 2017, we started to consider the possibility that we were seeing these differences because we were dealing with two different species, and by mid-2018 we started working on a manuscript. Exploring this problem continued through the Valley of the Mastodons symposium in 2017. To that end, in 2016 we launched a crowdfunding campaign on to allow us to gather mastodon measurements from other parts of the continent. A group of us started exploring that issue, trying to determine what was going on. Four years ago, I stumbled across the fact that California mastodons have different tooth proportions than other mastodons. The big news this week for Western Science Center was the naming of a new species of mastodon, Mammut pacificus.For decades, the consensus on Pleistocene mastodons (which I shared) was that in North America there was only a single, widespread species, Mammut americanum. David Webb (ed.), First Floridians and Last Mastodons: The Page-Ladson Site in the Aucilla River, Springer, p. Mastodon ( Mammut americanum) diet and foraging patterns based on analysis of dung deposits. Captive elephants that are fed pumpkins seem to have discovered the same trick:So far no Pacific mastodon coprolites have been identified, but hopefully one day we'll be able so say as much about their dietary habits.Reference:Lee Newsom and Matthew C. It seems that mastodons may have disliked the bitter rinds just like we do, and broken the gourds open to get at the interior. Using the Newsom and Mihlbachler paper as a guide, a few years ago we made a simulated piece of mastodon dung for exhibit at WSC, including numerous pumpkin and squash seeds: Newsom and Mihlbachler also noted that, while Curcurbita seeds were relatively common in their sample, rind fragments were almost completely absent. Among their samples were 156 Curcurbita seeds, showing that this was a popular item on the mastodon menu. The vast majority of the dung consisted of small cypress twigs, chopped up and stripped of bark, but there were other plant remains from at least 57 species. In 2006 Lee Newsom and Matthew Mihlbachler published a detailed report about an American mastodon dung deposit in northern Florida. As a result it became one of the first domesticated plants in North America more than 8,000 years ago.With large, nutritious fruits, we can be confident that wild Curcurbita were being eaten by more than just humans. In most species the rinds are bitter, but the interior is often more palatable and rich in nutrients. The fruits, which are technically berries, generally have a thick rind with a softer interior where the seeds are located. Curcurbita is a ecologically diverse genus, with some species needing a continuous water supply while others can live in arid conditions, so it is found natively in a variety of habitats. Curcurbita pepo is one of several domesticated species of the genus Curcurbita, vines that are native to the Americas.
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