Mastodons lived in Arctic and Subarctic North America during an interglacial period when the area was covered in forests and wetlands.
Photograph: Bettmann/Corbis
Creationism is rooted in Bronze Age mythology and rests on a single source, the Bible, whose only claim to authority is its own demonstrably false assertion that it is the inerrant word of a creator god.
This is a claim anyone could make, and it collapses when its statements are compared with the observable world.
For example, biblical genealogies, beginning with a mythical first couple created from dust without ancestors, imply that Earth is only a few thousand years old. In reality, geological and astronomical evidence shows that Earth is about 4.5 billion years old, and the fossil record demonstrates that life was flourishing hundreds of millions of years before the Bible implies creation began.
One striking piece of evidence comes from an analysis of mastodon DNA, which shows that between 100,000 and 200,000 years ago mastodons in North America had already diversified into several genetically distinct populations.
For much of the 19th and early 20th centuries, palaeontologists believed that the North American mastodons of the genus Mammut comprised multiple species. These were later consolidated into a single continent-wide species, Mammut americanum. More recently, this view was revised to distinguish an eastern species, M. americanum, from a western counterpart, M. pacificus. The latest genetic analysis, however, reveals an even more complex picture, shaped by long-distance migrations in response to climate change. The work was carried out by researchers from McMaster University, Canda, and Harvard University, USA.
Creationists gain no comfort from such scientific debates since every revision reflects new evidence rather than dogma. All palaeontologists agree that mastodons lived long before the supposed “Creation Week” described in Genesis, and that their diversification is explained by evolutionary processes acting on widespread populations—exactly as Darwinian theory predicts. Mastodons, like their relatives the mammoths and elephants, are absent from the Bible for the simple reason that its authors, confined to a small region of the Near East, had no knowledge of North America, of mastodons, or of the deep history of life on Earth.
About Mastodons.The new findings are published in an open-access paper in Science Advances and are also summarised in McMaster University’s online magazine, Brighter World.
- Scientific name: Mammut
- Family: Mammutidae (distinct from mammoths and modern elephants, which belong to Elephantidae)
- When they lived: From about 27 million years ago until their extinction \~10,000 years ago, near the end of the last Ice Age.
- Range: North and Central America, from Alaska to Honduras.
Appearance
Mastodons resembled modern elephants but were stockier, with shorter legs and a more domed head. Their tusks were long and sometimes curved. Unlike mammoths, which often had spiralled tusks and high, peaked skulls, mastodons had straighter tusks and a lower, more sloping profile.
Diet and Ecology
They were primarily browsers, feeding on leaves, twigs, and coniferous vegetation. Their molar teeth had cone-shaped cusps suited for chewing woody plants—hence the name “mastodon,” from the Greek mastós (breast) and odous (tooth), referring to the nipple-like shape of the molar crowns.
Species
- American mastodon (Mammut americanum): The most widespread and best-known species, found across much of North America.
- Pacific mastodon (Mammut pacificus): Identified more recently, restricted to the western United States.
Earlier in palaeontological history, numerous species were proposed, but most have since been reclassified.
Extinction
Mastodons vanished around 10,000 years ago, likely due to a combination of climate change at the end of the Pleistocene and overhunting by early humans. Fossil evidence shows they were part of the megafauna extinction that also wiped out mammoths, giant ground sloths, and sabre-toothed cats.
Fun Fact
Well-preserved mastodon remains have been found in peat bogs and frozen soils. Some specimens still contain preserved DNA, allowing scientists to study their evolutionary history and population structure tens of thousands of years after they disappeared.
Mastodons and Their Relatives
- Mastodons (Mammutidae)
- Belong to a separate family, the Mammutidae, which split from the lineage leading to mammoths and elephants very early.
- They diverged from the common ancestor of elephants and mammoths around 25–30 million years ago.
- Their teeth (with nipple-like cusps) show they were adapted for browsing on woody plants, unlike the grazing mammoths.
- Mammoths (Mammuthus, Elephantidae)
- Belonged to the same family as modern elephants (Elephantidae).
- Diverged from the ancestors of today’s African and Asian elephants about 6 million years ago.
- Characterised by high-domed skulls, spiralled tusks, and flat ridged teeth adapted for grazing grasses.
- Modern Elephants
- The only surviving members of Elephantidae:
- African bush elephant (Loxodonta africana)
- African forest elephant (L. cyclotis)
- Asian elephant (Elephas maximus)
- Share a more recent common ancestor with mammoths than with mastodons.
In summary:
- Mastodons are close cousins, not direct ancestors, of mammoths and elephants.
- They split from the elephant lineage tens of millions of years earlier, making them more distantly related than mammoths are to living elephants.
Ancient DNA reveals deeply complex Mastodon family and repeated migrations driven by climate change
An ancient DNA analysis of the remains of several mastodons, including those which roamed along the Pacific and Atlantic coasts of North America, has revealed the Ice Age giants migrated vast distances in response to shifting climates and were far more genetically diverse than previously known.
In the study published today in the journal Science Advances, researchers from McMaster University and Harvard provide new evidence which significantly revises and reshapes our understanding of the species’ deeply complex evolutionary history.
Well-preserved fossilized specimens of teeth, tusks and bone—dating back hundreds of thousands of years—coupled with new scientific techniques, have allowed researchers to reconstruct genomes from ancient, tiny, degraded DNA fragments.
A mastodon femur.
They reconstructed the mitochondrial genomes from several mastodon specimens: five from Nova Scotia and the eastern seaboard, one of which may date to approximately 500,000 years ago, and for the first time, a unique specimen of a Pacific mastodon from Tualatin, Oregon, in addition to a partial mitochondrial genome from Northern Ontario.
Mastodons were initially split into numerous separate species but later consolidated back into a single one – Mammut americanum. More recently, this classification has been revised to potentially include at least two distinct species: the American and the Pacific mastodon (M. pacificus), although a debate over the split has persisted.
The genetic analyses confirm the Pacific mastodons belong to a very old, well-established and separate genetic branch, with a range that extended much farther than previously believed—reaching deep into the Pacific Northwest, possibly south to Mexico, and as far north as Alberta.
Interestingly, Alberta appears to have been a ‘hot spot’, say scientists, where Pacific and American mastodons congregated, expanded northward and may have interbred.
The East Coast and Northern Ontario specimens revealed two new and distinct genetic groups, known as clades, of mastodons living in the same region but at different times. The eastern species were surprisingly diverse, arriving in distinct waves of migration at least three times —a pattern driven by repeated cycles of climate warming, leading to glacial melting and the opening of new territory for northward expansion. When climate cooled and glaciers expanded, mastodons were driven south or went locally extinct.
The data shifts our view of the region today known as Alberta and the north more generally, from a marginal roaming ground to a repeatedly occupied migratory corridor and significant landscape for mastodons with possible interbreeding.
Professor Hendrik Poinar, senior author
Michael G. DeGroote Chair in Genetic Anthropology.
McMaster Ancient DNA Centre
Departments of Biochemistry and Anthropology
McMaster University, Hamilton, ON, Canada.
Researchers also pinpointed a mysterious and genetically distinct Mexican mastodon lineage, which they believe could be a deeper branch of the western species M. pacificus or possibly an entirely new, third mastodon species.
The mastodon was among the largest living land animals on Earth during the Ice Age, roaming from Beringia (present-day Alaska and the Yukon) east to Nova Scotia and south to Central Mexico. They were primarily browsers, living in swampy settings, eating shrubs and low-hanging tree branches, and occupied a very different habitant from their distant cousins, the Ice Age iconic woolly mammoths which roamed on open grasslands and tundra.
The genetic analyses confirm the Pacific mastodons belong to a very old, well-established and separate genetic branch, with a range that extended much farther than previously believed—reaching deep into the Pacific Northwest, possibly south to Mexico, and as far north as Alberta.This study represents several firsts which includes our work on the Pacific mastodon. It also poses many new questions. For example, how did these distant species of mastodon interact in Alberta? Did they compete for resources, or did they interbreed as our lab has previously shown for mammoths?
Emil Karpinski, lead author
Department of Genetics
Harvard Medical School
Boston, MA, USA.
These new findings, combined with those reported in a 2020 study conducted by the same team, create a much more complete picture of how mastodons moved and diversified across North America, helping conservationists today prepare for an ever warming artic and northern migrating species, say researchers.
Publication:
Abstract
Ancient DNA has been useful in reconciling deep evolutionary relationships and responses to ecological changes in proboscideans. Here, we report the sequencing of a mitochondrial genome from a morphologically distinct Pacific mastodon, as well as from six eastern American mastodons with ages that range through the Middle and Late Pleistocene. We show that Pacific mastodons fall within a deeply divergent mitochondrial clade, extending the range of this species into western Canada and potentially Mexico. We also present evidence for at least three discrete expansion events into northeastern coastal regions and identify two new mastodon clades, which contain temporally distinct but geographically colocalized specimens. We integrate these findings with those of previous work into a comprehensive model of Mammut phylogeography.
INTRODUCTION
Our understanding of the deep evolutionary relationships within and between extinct taxa and their extant relatives has undergone successive revisions as new paleontological and biomolecular data have become available [see, for example, (1, 2)]. With the growing capability to recover and analyze tiny, ancient, degraded DNA fragments from hundreds of thousands of years old remains, we have begun to answer previously unresolved questions, adding complementary lines of inquiry into paleontological studies, where recovered remains are often too fragmentary for clear morphological identification. Ancient molecular data can help clarify relationships between and estimate divergence times of populations and study their demographics, as well as their responses to various ecological, climatological, and anthropogenic pressures (3–5).
Consequently, North American mastodon taxonomy has also undergone substantial revisions. In the 19th and early 20th centuries, Mammut consisted of many species, which were subsequently synonymized into a single Late Pleistocene species (Mammut americanum) before being split again into two co-occurring Late Pleistocene taxa, the American mastodon (M. americanum) and the Pacific mastodon (Mammut pacificus) (6–8). Previous ancient DNA work on mastodon remains from the American Falls Reservoir has suggested that these two taxa might not be separate species and instead represent discrete morphotypes (9). Instead, it did reveal that Idaho Falls mastodons were part of a predominantly marine isotope stage 5 (MIS 5) clade of mastodons that likely expanded from the contiguous US, up along the Rockies, and into the Arctic in response to interglacial warming (4, 9). Unfortunately, previous work was stymied by the recovery of genetic material from very fragmentary remains, which precluded clear morphological identification (9).
These studies, which highlighted morphological and genetic variability in Late Pleistocene mastodons, suggested a much more complex evolutionary history than previously appreciated. At this time, it is unclear whether and how much of the genetic diversity observed reflects species-level versus population-level divergence. This work begins to disentangle these differences by focusing primarily on mastodons from the peripheries of their core geographic ranges [M. americanum: Great Lakes (10); M. pacificus: California and Idaho (7)] to further our understanding of mastodon phylogeography. Now, we present sequence data from a morphologically assigned Pacific mastodon from Tualatin, OR, as well as six additional American mastodons from Nova Scotia and the eastern seaboard, within which we have identified novel and deep patterns of expansion/extirpation in response to glacial cycling. In tandem, these data fill holes in our understanding of mastodon evolutionary relationships and highlight the acute responsiveness of these species to glacial/interglacial cycles at both coastal margins of the continent.
Fig. 1. Tualatin mastodon.
(A) Relationship between molar length and maximum width in the upper third molar (M3) of the Tualatin mastodon in comparison to M. pacificus and M. americanum M3s from the Great Lakes region and Beringia. The 95% confidence interval around each regression line is indicated in the shaded color. (B) Upper occlusal view of the Tualatin mastodon’s M3.Photo credit: A. R. Boehm, UOMNCH.
Fig. 2. Mastodon phylogeography.
(A) Map of North American mastodon localities with available mitochondrial genomes (including the partial genome from Renison) colored as per their assigned clade/lineage. (B) Maximum clade credibility tree generated using all undated/nonfinite mastodons pre-estimated individually and then combined (Individual model). Specimens generated as part of this study are shown in bold. Nodes with posterior probability values greater than or equal to 0.95 are indicated by green circles. Support for other key nodes is indicated in the text next to the relevant node.
Fig. 3. Mastodon age estimates.
Marginal posterior densities of specimen ages estimated using a Joint model (all unknown/nonfinite mastodons estimated simultaneously; dashed lines) or an Individual model (all unknown/nonfinite mastodons pre-estimated individually and then combined; solid lines). Each violin represents the 95% HPD interval estimated for each specimen. Specimens are colored on the basis of their clade/lineage assignments. Specimens generated as part of this study are shown in bold. The δ18O record for the past 800 kyr (39) is overlaid below the plot, and the approximate extent of the MIS 5 interglacial period is highlighted in gray. The dashed line represents the lower bound of the analysis, 13,087 ka, the age of the youngest specimen (UWZM 19580).
Fig. 4. Pleistocene Mammut biogeography.
Geographic model of our understanding of mastodon distributions and relationships throughout the Middle to Late Pleistocene. The approximate inferred distributions of the American mastodon morphological complex are shaded in red, and those for the Pacific mastodon are shaded in blue. The locations of mastodon remains from previous large studies (4, 7, 40) are also provided (data S2). The single M. pacificus specimen from McDonald et al. (11) was combined with other Pacific mastodons from Dooley et al. (7). Arrows indicate minimum confirmed expansions in response to glacial/interglacial cycles, with their timing ranges as estimated by the Individual model indicated in the text. Arrows fade as they enter the contiguous United States because of the lack of a known source population. Key contributions from this study are indicated by dashed circles and roman numerals. (I) First mitochondrial data from a clearly identified Pacific mastodon from Tualatin, OR. (II) Reclassification of an Alberta mastodon (RAM P97.7.1) as M. pacificus, extending the range of Pacific mastodons into western Canada and into regions where it might have been concurrent with mastodons showing characteristics of the M. americanum morphological complex. (III) Possible extension of M. pacificus into Mexico or the identification of another Mammut “species” (shown in green). (IV) Increased genetic resolution in eastern North America and the identification of at least three expansions into the eastern seaboard.
Karpinski, Emil; Baleka, Sina; Boehm, Andrew R.; Fedak, Tim; Widga, Chris; Poinar, Hendrik N.
Repeated climate-driven dispersal and speciation in peripheral populations of Pleistocene mastodons.
Sci. Adv. 11, eadw2240 (2025). DOI:10.1126/sciadv.adw2240
Copyright: © 2025 The authors.
Published by the American Association for the Advancement of Science. Open access.
Reprinted under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International license (CC BY 4.0)
Far from supporting the idea of a young Earth and fixed “kinds,” the study of mastodons shows once again how science uncovers a far deeper, richer, and more complex story of life than the authors of Genesis could ever have imagined. DNA preserved for over 100,000 years has revealed patterns of migration, adaptation, and diversification—precisely the outcomes predicted by evolutionary theory, and utterly at odds with the simplistic notion of a magically created menagerie appearing fully formed a few thousand years ago.
As always, creationism is left clinging to ancient myths, unable to accommodate the evidence without retreating into denial or distortion. Science, by contrast, advances by testing ideas against reality, revising its models in light of new data, and steadily building a coherent account of the past. Each discovery, whether in the genome of a mastodon or in the rocks beneath our feet, reinforces the same message: life has a long, evolutionary history, and no amount of scripture can alter that fact.
The parochial storytellers of the Bronze Age, unaware of continents beyond their own horizon and oblivious to the deep history written into the Earth, could hardly have anticipated that their tales would one day be pressed into service as pseudo-science. Mastodons, mammoths, and elephants testify to the true grandeur of natural history—a history shaped by evolution, not invention.
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