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
Mastodon (band) I think it's incredible." Following their first tours in the early 2000s, Mastodon have performed at many major festivals such as Download, Roskilde, Coachella, Bonnaroo, Big Day Out, Rock Werchter, Pinkpop, Metaltown, Ottawa Bluesfest, Sonisphere and Soundwave. When performing the band has traditionally had a fairly lo-fi visual presentation. However, during the band's "Crack The Skye Tour" (2009–2010), they used a large screen behind the drumkit showing a visual show. The "sludge/stoner/alternative metal outfit" Mastodon, as labelled by Allmusic, is "one of the preeminent metal acts of the early 21st century". The BBC stated about Mastodon: "They might be bonkers