Notiomastodon Notiomastodon Notiomastodon is an extinct proboscidean genus of gomphothere (a distant relative to modern Elephants) endemic to South America from the Pleistocene to the Holocene living for approximately . Proboscideans in South America were first described by Georges Cuvier in 1806 but he failed to give them specific names beyond "Mastodon". It was Fischer in 1814 who gave the “"mastodonte des cordillères"” specimen the first specific name ""Mastotherium hyodon"". In 1824, Cuvier gave the specific names of ""Mastodon andium"" to the ""mastodonte des cordillères"" specimen, and ""Mastodon humboldtii"" to the ""mastodonte humboldien"". Due to the Principle of Priority, this means
Mastodon incognitum "mastodon". The name "mastodon" (or "mastodont") means "breast tooth" (Ancient Greek: μαστός "breast" and ὀδούς, "tooth"), and was assigned by the French naturalist Georges Cuvier in 1817, for the nipple-like projections on the crowns of its molars. "Mastodon" as a genus name is obsolete; the valid name is "Mammut", a name that preceded Cuvier's description, making "Mastodon" a junior synonym. The change was met with resistance, and authors sometimes applied ""Mastodon"" as an informal name; consequently it became the common term for members of the genus. Species include: Since a tentative 1977 report of "M. matthewi" in China, there