Are the Mastodon and Smilodon dinosaurs?

At the museum, the bones  are in the dinosaur room, they look pretty strange, one is a really giganteous critter, the other is very scary, and . . .

Let’s take those beasties one at a time.

Big fella, you first.

A Mastodon is a large extinct (no longer in existence) mammal related to the modern-day elephant. The first Mastodon started lumbering about the Earth 27 million years ago, and last Mastodon disappeared around 12,000 years ago, in or about 10,000 BC. In fact, you can see some Mastodon’s working on a pyramid in Egypt in the movie “10,000 BC” – which received a “D” by the critics but is, I thought, a fun period piece, and it does have Mastodons. Dinosaurs, or terrible lizards, are much older. The first terrible lizard started roaring and stomping about 230 million years ago, and the last big noisemaker fell over in the cold and turned into a fossil about 65 million years ago. Working with these dates (from the experts on the Internet, of course), the Mastodon missed the Age of the Dinosaurs by about 38 million years, give or take a million years, here or there. So, the Mastodon and the Dinosaur are not contemporaries. They are also not considered to be in the same family of critters – as taxonomists, biologists and paleontologists classify old bones. It is thought that cold weather (possibly from an asteroid hitting the Earth and forming what is now the Gulf of Mexico) caused the bigger dinosaurs to get the flu in the ensuing ice age and expire, while the Woolly Mammoths, who are also proto-elephants and cousins of the Mastodons, were better covered with a big furry coats and seemed to have enjoyed cold weather, which has led some to speculate that the current residents of Minnesota, who love snow and ice, may be distantly related in some manner to the Mastodon and Woolly Mammoth.

Here are the bones of a Mastodon or Woolly Mammoth (not sure what it said on this big guys’ driver’s license, but I think the Mammoths have the trunks like these curving together) from the newly opened Perot Museum of Natural History in Dallas, Texas (a must place to visit, if you are stopping by the town). Aren’t the tusks amazing? They must have almost touched in real life.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Now for the cat. Please take the stage, Mr. Smilodon . . .

“My, what large teeth you have.” But this is no Big Bad Wolf in Grandma’s bed clothes, and those teeth are much larger and longer. That smiling Smilodon is one big cat with saber-toothed maxillary canines (big long sharp front teeth). In fact, the name “Smilodon” comes from the Greek for “carving knife.” Get the picture. Don’t mess with this kitty. The saber-toothed cat is often incorrectly called the saber-toothed tiger, but this feline is not closely related to the tiger. It was cat, but a cat with 11-inch knives for teeth, and it was big. The biggest saber-toothed cats may have weighed over 900 pounds. You can only imagine what that pet would do to your living room furniture. We’re talking toothpicks, assorted furballs and dust motes for all that would be left, in short order. Luckily, there are no more Smilodons purring beside our beds to wake us screaming in the morning running from our homes. The first big cat started sharpening his teeth about 2.5 million years ago, and the last Smilodon sank into the La Brea tar pits in Los Angeles, or thereabouts, about 10,000 years ago. Yes, I think there were a couple saber-toothed cats in the movie 10,000 BC. Those smiling felines with the lengthy incisors were prowling about watching the Mastodons and Mammoths graze for food, but the saber-toothed cats seldom messed with the Big Tuskers, because you see those Mastodon tusks were bigger and longer than those of Smilodon even with its ferocious teethy feline grin.

Below is the skeletal frame of what may be a young Smilodon scampering about, without its fur, at the Perot Museum. Smilodon was not, as I bet you have surmised at this point, a dinosaur, and it did not live during the Times of the Big Saurs, but I bet that cat would have scared off even a few of those terrible lizards.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

The world is a big place full of strange and interesting creatures.

It is good that some, at least, are no longer with us.

Keep smiling and polishing those teeth,

Grandpa Jim