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
Perry Mastodon when the school was seeking to change its mascot. Perry Mastodon also inspired a song called "Perry, the Mastodon" by college campus band, The Two Twangs. The mastodon has been the victim of many pranks over the years. The most legendary occurred on Parents' Day 1975, when a bogus tape recording was inserted in place of the true story of the Mastodon. This prank was written up in the 1976 yearbook, the school newspaper, the Wheaton Daily Journal, and the official history of the college by Paul Bechtel. Perry Mastodon Perry Mastodon (sometimes called "Perry, the Mastodon") is the name