Mastodons and Mammoths by Anna Fedotova

Lexia® PowerUp Literacy® Title Comprehension Passages Mastodons and Mammoths Two Little Mermaids

LEVEL 8, ACTIVITY 1

[1] In 2014, a contractor in Michigan was digging up his neighbor’s backyard. He was amazed to find a long, curved bone. It was a rib bone from a gigantic animal. The two men kept digging. After uncovering more bones, they called in an expert. The scientist said the 42 bones belonged to a mastodon. Mastodons died out 10,000 years ago!

[2] In 2007, a reindeer herder in Siberia found the frozen body of a baby mammal. It was a woolly mammoth. Scientists concluded that the animal had died 40 thousand years earlier! Woolly mammoths have been extinct for 10 thousand years.

[3] These remains have been carefully studied, along with many others found over the years. Mastodons and woolly mammoths are ancient cousins. Both are related to Earth’s largest living land mammals—elephants.

MASTODONS

[4] The earliest mastodons appeared about 35 million years ago in Africa. Over time, the animals traveled and changed. Mastodon remains are commonly found in North America.

[5] Large adult mastodons weighed about five tons. Though slightly shorter than modern-day elephants, mastodons were more heavyset. They had long, curving tusks. Short fur covered their trunks, tails, and bodies.

[6] Scientists know that mastodons were plant eaters. The animals’ teeth were made for grinding. Mastodons ate mainly leaves, fruits, and other tree parts.

WOOLLY MAMMOTHS

[7] The first mammoths appeared about two million years ago. Researchers say that mammoths descended from an African ancestor. Asian and African elephants share that ancestor. Mammoths are most closely related to modern Asian elephants.

[8] Several kinds of mammoths roamed through Europe, Asia, and North America. Woolly mammoths adapted to survive in the coldest regions. A woolly mammoth had a long coat of thick, shaggy fur.

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Under that coat were two more layers of fur. Fur covered its trunk and tail, too. These animals weighed as much as six tons. They were similar in height to mastodons. But mastodons had longer bodies.

[9] Like mastodons, woolly mammoths had tusks. Mammoth tusks, however, grew much longer.

[10] The teeth and stomach contents of woolly mammoths show that the animals were grazers. They fed on grasses, shrubs, and other ground plants.

EXTINCTION

[11] Woolly mammoths and mastodons died out during the last Ice Age. So did many other large animals. Scientists do not know for sure what killed them. It’s possible that human hunters were responsible. Perhaps a changing climate or a natural disaster played a role. There are still questions to explore and answers to discover.

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