Mastodons and gomphotheres spread beyond Africa

For tens of millions of years Africa and its elephant relatives were isolated from other continents. About 19 million years ago, the collision of the African and Eurasian plates created a land bridge across the closing Tethys seaway. Proboscideans, led by long-jawed Gomphotherium, crossed into Eurasia. Paleontologists call this the Proboscidean Datum because their sudden appearance in Eurasian fossil beds is such a clean marker.¹

Once out of Africa, gomphotheres and later mammutids spread widely. Some crossed the Bering region into North America about 16 million years ago, where gomphotheres and later the American mastodon, Mammut americanum, flourished in forests. Mastodons had low, thick bodies and cone-shaped teeth, fit for browsing woody plants, unlike the grass-grinding teeth of mammoths. Within a few million years proboscideans lived across Africa, Eurasia and the Americas, and dozens of species coexisted. Most vanished after the Pleistocene, when the American mastodon was among the last to die out, about 11,000 years ago.¹