Regional variation in the browsing diet of Pleistocene Mammut americanum (Mammalia, Proboscidea) as recorded by dental microwear textures

Reframing the mammoth steppe: Insights from analysis of isotopic niches

“…A browsing dietary niche has been established for mastodon Green et al, 2017;Haynes, 1991;Koch et al, 1998;, consistent with its interglacial occupancy of regions considered at other times to be mammoth steppe. While trees were not present in all regions and times during the Pleistocene, woody shrubs were present during much of this time (e.g., Höfle et al, 2000;).…”

American mastodon mitochondrial genomes suggest multiple dispersal events in response to Pleistocene climate oscillations

“…American mastodons (Mammut americanum) were an iconic part of wooded and swampy habitats in Pleistocene North America [22][23][24] , with remains recovered from the Central American subtropics to the Arctic latitudes of Alaska and Yukon 20,25 . Stable isotope data, dental morphology, and microwear analyses reveal some regional and chronological variation or flexibility in diet, although C 3 woody browse vegetation (e.g., spruce trees) seems to have been preferred [25][26][27][28] . Like most proboscideans, the mastodon was a keystone species and served an important role in maintaining the integrity and diversity of its preferred habitats 25,29,30 .…”

Mammut pacificussp. nov., a newly recognized species of mastodon from the Pleistocene of western North America

“…The sparse distribution of high growing, generally woody vegetation in desert environments may have limited the abundance of browsing specialists such as Mammut (but see Green, DeSantis & Smith, 2017; Smith & DeSantis, 2018), while xeric shrubs, succulents and occasional grasslands could have supported generalists such as Mammuthus and Cuvieronius . The limited abundance of high-growing woody vegetation in the high mountains and deserts of Mexico may also explain the limited reports of Mammut remains from Central America (Polaco et al, 2001) and the inability for Mammut to have traveled into South America via the Panamanian Land Bridge as did at least two species of gomphotheres (Mothé et al, 2017).…”