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
Call of the Mastodon Call of the Mastodon Call of the Mastodon is a compilation of early recordings of the metal band Mastodon. It was released on February 7, 2006, by Relapse Records. It contains alternate re-ordered versions of all the songs from their EP "Lifesblood", as well as the three tracks from their 7" debut EP "Slick Leg". Both originally released in 2001 and a bonus song, "Call of the Mastodon", which has only appeared on the "9 Song Demo", which originally contained vocals by their previous vocalist Eric Saner. This was their final release on Relapse; they subsequently signed to Warner Music.