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
Manis Mastodon Site remains the oldest archaeological site on the Olympic Peninsula in Washington State and one of the oldest in North America. In November 2011, Shirley Manis, daughter of discoverer Emanuel Manis, authored the first and only children's picture book about the Manis Mastodon Site, which includes the most recent research analysis. Manis Mastodon Site The Manis Mastodon site is a archaeological site on the Olympic Peninsula near Sequim, Washington, United States. During the dig, the remains of an American mastodon was recovered which had a 13,800 year old projectile made of the bone from a different mastodon embedded in its rib.