mastodons

• mastodons

61:3.420,000,000 years ago was in­deed the golden age of mam­mals. The Bering Strait land bridge was up, and many groups of an­i­mals mi­grated to North Amer­ica from Asia, in­clud­ing the four-tusked mastodons, short-legged rhinoceroses, and many va­ri­eties of the cat fam­ily.

• mastodons

61:4.4In gen­eral, the life of the pre­ced­ing pe­riod con­tin­ued to evolve and spread. The cat fam­ily dom­i­nated the an­i­mal life, and ma­rine life was al­most at a stand­still. Many of the horses were still three-toed, but the mod­ern types were ar­riv­ing; lla­mas and gi­raf­fe­like camels min­gled with the horses on the graz­ing plains. The gi­raffe ap­peared in Africa, hav­ing just as long a neck then as now. In South Amer­ica sloths, ar­madil­los, anteaters, and the South Amer­i­can type of prim­i­tive mon­keys evolved. Be­fore the con­ti­nents were fi­nally iso­lated, those mas­sive an­i­mals, the mastodons, mi­grated ev­ery­where ex­cept to Aus­tralia.

• mastodons

61:5.7These first two ice in­va­sions were not ex­ten­sive in Eura­sia. Dur­ing these early epochs of the ice age North Amer­ica was over­run with mastodons, woolly mam­moths, horses, camels, deer, musk oxen, bi­son, ground sloths, gi­ant beavers, saber-toothed tigers, sloths as large as ele­phants, and many groups of the cat and dog fam­i­lies. But from this time for­ward they were rapidly re­duced in num­bers by the in­creas­ing cold of the glacial pe­riod. To­ward the close of the ice age the ma­jor­ity of these an­i­mal species were ex­tinct in North Amer­ica.

• exterminated by red man in ice age

61:7.13The rig­or­ous glacial pe­riod de­stroyed many species and rad­i­cally changed nu­mer­ous oth­ers. Many were sorely sifted by the to-and-fro mi­gra­tion which was made nec­es­sary by the ad­vanc­ing and re­treat­ing ice. Those an­i­mals which fol­lowed the glaciers back and forth over the land were the bear, bi­son, rein­deer, musk ox, mam­moth, and mastodon.

61:7.14The mam­moth sought the open prairies, but the mastodon pre­ferred the shel­tered fringes of the for­est re­gions. The mam­moth, un­til a late date, ranged from Mex­ico to Canada; the Siberian va­ri­ety be­came wool cov­ered. The mastodon per­sisted in North Amer­ica un­til ex­ter­mi­nated by the red man much as the white man later killed off the bi­son.

• massiveness of passing Reptilia found echo in

65:2.10The king­dom of rep­tiles, de­scended from the frog fam­ily, is to­day rep­re­sented by four sur­viv­ing di­vi­sions: two non­pro­gres­sive, snakes and lizards, to­gether with their cousins, al­li­ga­tors and tur­tles; one par­tially pro­gres­sive, the bird fam­ily, and the fourth, the an­ces­tors of mam­mals and the di­rect line of de­scent of the hu­man species. But though long de­parted, the mas­sive­ness of the pass­ing Rep­tilia found echo in the ele­phant and mastodon, while their pe­cu­liar forms were per­pet­u­ated in the leap­ing kan­ga­roos.