Mammoth construction of the Great Pyramid of ancient Egypt. The earliest known proboscideans, the clade that contains the elephants, existed about 55 million years ago around the Tethys Sea area. The closest relatives of the Proboscidea are the sirenians and the hyraxes. The family Elephantidae is known to have existed six million years ago in Africa, and includes the living elephants and the mammoths. Among many now extinct clades, the mastodon is only a distant relative of the mammoths, and part of the separate Mammutidae family, which diverged 25 million years before the mammoths evolved. The following cladogram shows the placement
Cerutti Mastodon site 300 other bone fragments. The remains of dire wolf, horse, camel, mammoth and ground sloth were also discovered at the site. Five cobbles displaying use-wear and impact marks were also recovered from the site in Bed E. The research team found cobbles and broken mastodon bones lying together at the site. Uranium-thorium dating of bones from the site estimates a dating of around 130,700 (±9,400) years ago for the Cerutti Mastodon site. The research team claims that the cobbles found at the site were used as hammerstones and anvils. The research team also claims that the mastodon bones show signs