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Amebelodon floridanus

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The “Shovel-tusker” is a member of the gomphotheres—a group of proboscideans related to the mammoths and modern-day elephants. Here I’ve depicted a small herd of them making their way on a regularly-used trail through a Slash Pine-Saw Palmetto Scrubland in Miocene Florida.
For a long time it was assumed that the shovel-shaped lower jaw was used to scoop up marsh plants. Recent tooth-wear analysis, however, suggests that Amebelodons were more generalist browsers that used their shovels for many purposes such as scraping bark, breaking branches and stripping leaves.
The large “cats” fleeing in the foreground are Barbourofelids. Though they look like sabre-tooth Smilodons, Barbourofelids (and their close relatives, the nimravids) are not closely related to cats, being instead an example of convergent evolution. Barbourofelids were pretty robust and built more like a bear than a cat. As such, these two probably could take down an adult Amebelodon if they wanted, but like most predators they’d rather flee than risk a potentially fatal injury.
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The last gomphotheres held out in South America as Stegomastodon and Cuvieronius during the Pleistocene. Therefore; prior to the megafaunal extinctions at the end of the Pleistocene, there were three families of Proboscideans including the Mastodons and the elephants. The Proboscideans were hardly an archaic order on its way out. They were the victims from the sophisticated hunting techniques developed by the Clovis culture. Now there are only three extant species in the elephant family.