Mammoths, Mastodons From Ohio did *NOT* Migrate

Their scruffy beards weren't ironic, but there are reasons mammoths and mastodons could have been the hipsters of the Ice Age.

According to research from the University of Cincinnati, the famously fuzzy relatives of elephants liked living in Greater Cincinnati long before it was trendy – at the end of the last ice age. A study led by Brooke Crowley, an assistant professor of geology and anthropology, shows the ancient proboscideans enjoyed the area so much they likely were year-round residents and not nomadic migrants as previously thought.

They even had their own preferred hangouts. Crowley's findings indicate each species kept to separate areas based on availability of favored foods here at the southern edge of the Last Glacial Maximum's major ice sheet.

"I suspect that this was a pretty nice place to live, relatively speaking," Crowley says. "Our data suggest that animals probably had what they needed to survive here year-round."

[...]

Mammoths ate more grasses and sedges than mastodons, which favored leaves from trees or shrubs.

Strontium from all of the animals (except one mastodon) matched local water samples, meaning they likely were less mobile and migratory than previously thought.

Differences in strontium and carbon between mammoths and mastodons suggest they didn't inhabit the same localities.

Mammoths preferred to be closer to the retreating ice sheet where grasses were more abundant, whereas mastodons fed farther from the ice sheet in more forested habitat.

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