F2603

Prehistoric Animals

Mastodon

Collins Cover Announcement 

This great ancestor of the elephant last traveled the earth about 10,000 years ago. This prehistoric animal had long tusks protruding from its jaws and the color of its hair was a rusty red. Paleontologist Daniel Fisher has put forth the theory that mastodons were hunted into extinction as was nearly the fate of the American bison. A recent article on this possibility is most interesting.

Study suggests hunters killed off mastodons

NEW YORK — The tusks tell a tale 10,000 years old — a tale of murder. 

In the waning days of the last ice age, humans swarmed into North America from Asia and began hunting the mammoths, mastodon, and other giant beasts they that found there. The tusks of the giant beasts they found there. The tusks of that giant , hairy elephants suggest the hunters drove their prey to extinction, paleontologistn Daniel Fisher contends.  

Fisher studies mammoth and mastodon tusks beacause the oversized teeth chronicle their owners' lives the same way tree fings document the plant's growth history.

A tusk can show what a mammoth ate and how much, how many times the anaimal gave burth, and even what kind of climate it lived in. When analyzed under a miroscope, tuskd can literally provide a day-to-day account.

"it's a diary of the animals life in the most literal sense of the word," said Fisher, a geology profeeor at the University of Michigan in Ann Arbor.

When he reads the ivory diaries that have been found around the Great Lakes region, Fisher sees mammoths and their mastodon cousins reacting to intense hunting pressure, possibly intense enough to explain the animals extinction about 10,000 years age.

Fisher presented his case to a meeting of paleontologist Wednesday at the Mueum of Natural History in York City.

The tusks also tell Fisher that mammoths wrere reproducing as if being hunted, not starving, was their primary worry. When elephants in present-day Africa are hunted, the young generally and the adults reproduce as often as possible.

My hand-painted cachet shows a pair of the mastodons just completing a charge. This dramatic moment is made more exciting by a multicolored sky symbolic of a changing era. The one on the left has stopped but continues a threatening stance. The one on the right comes to an abrupt stop with dust kicking up at his skidding feet.

Are they facing an early hunter with the cunning and skill to off-set their brute force and natural power? Are they facing extinction? The mastodon. Item #F2603. $11.75.

Summer 2024 Mail Sale Commentary 

Lot 24 F2601, F2602, F2603, F2604 — Prehistoric Animals (set of 4 covers) — 6-8-96

The four stamps for the Prehistoric Animals mini-series are interesting and unique. Eohippuses (F2601) were the ancestors of today's horses, but they were much smaller — about the size of a fox. It took that prehistoric animal about 50 million years to grow into the large horses we know today. They lived in North America and Europe and had eyes in the middle of their skulls. The Wooly Mammoths (F2602) roamed the Northern Hemisphere for at least a half a million years. They were ancient elephants and grazed on plants. They gave birth to one calf at a time. Females and young roamed in herds of about 15 individuals. Wooly mammoths weighed between 5 to 13 tons each, and they were extinct as of 4,000 years ago. Mastodons (F2603) were also enormous and weighed as much as 6 tons. They had low-domed heads with prominent upper tusks. They were related to but not the same as wooly mammoths. Their extinction was complete about 10,000 years ago. Saber Tooth (F2604) cats weighed about 350 to 620 pounds and were the size of today's Siberian tigers. They were ferocious and were able to successfully hunt larger animals such as bison and horses. Saber tooth cats went extinct approximately 10,000 years ago. This is the first time these Prehistoric Animals have appeared in one of my sales.