Imagine standing next to an animal whose shoulder
is, well, taller than a single -story house.
Which is already pretty hard to picture. Right.
Now picture that same creature carrying highly
modified teeth tusks. Really that way as much
as the grand piano. It sounds completely made
up. It sounds exactly like something out of a
science fiction movie. Or, you know, maybe a
fantasy novel. But it was very, very real. Welcome
to today's deep dive into the source material.
Yes, welcome. Today we are putting a magnifying
glass on one of the most astonishing creatures
to ever walk the earth. And we have a fascinating
single source for you today. A really comprehensive
Wikipedia article. Exactly. On a behemoth known
as Mamet Borsoni. Or Borson's mastodon. And our
mission for you today is threefold. Yep. First,
we're going to explore the sheer, unbelievable
scale of this animal. Then we're going to figure
out why scientists insist on putting its name
in quotation marks. And finally, we'll reconstruct
exactly what the world looked like when it was
alive. Because it is completely understandable
if your mind immediately went to woolly mammoths
or modern African elephants when you heard those
dimensions. We all have that baseline. We do.
But what we're looking at today is an incredible,
often entirely overlooked chapter in Earth's
history. Borson's mastodon isn't just another
extinct elephant relative. Far from it. It's
a creature that fundamentally challenges our
understanding of mammalian evolution, physical
scale, and how entirely different species can
end up looking remarkably similar. It really
rewards the curiosity of anyone willing to look
past the famous Ice Age megafauna we all know
so well. Absolutely. Okay, so let's unpack this
sheer scale, because the numbers here are genuinely
hard to wrap your head around. They really are.
When we talk about mammoth borsoni, we are talking
about a true titan. I know our source highlights
some specific fossil sites, particularly in northern
Greece, that give us a clear picture of just
how big these animals got. Give us the raw measurements.
What are we actually dealing with here? Right.
So based on partial skeletons found in a Greek
village called Melia, scientists estimate that
fully grown males of this species reach shoulder
heights of up to 4 .1 meters. Wow. That is about
13 .5 feet straight up in the air. That is staggering.
And as for the weight, conservative estimates
put them around 16 tons, or roughly 35 ,000 pounds.
To put that into perspective for everyone listening,
you would need to stack roughly eight average
-sized passenger cars on a giant scale to match
the weight of just one of these males. Just one.
How does that compare to the giants we are more
familiar with? At 16 tons, it is significantly
heavier and taller than any modern elephant species.
Right. It also completely dwarfs the famous American
mastodon, which is what most people picture when
they hear the word mastodon. Sure. These estimates
actually put Borson's mastodon in the running
for the title of the largest land mammal to have
ever lived anywhere on Earth. The largest ever.
Yeah. For a very long time, that undisputed heavyweight
title belonged to Paraceratherium. The giant
rhino. Exactly, the towering hornless rhinoceros
from ancient Asia. But the discoveries in Greece
suggest Borson's mastodon was right there in
the exact same weight class, battling for the
top spot. We haven't even talked about the most
shocking detail yet. I'm looking at the notes
on its tusks, and frankly, the physics of this
don't even seem possible. Just how extreme were
these modifications? We are talking about the
longest known tusks of any animal ever discovered.
The longest ever? Ever. One preserved tusk from
a... probable male specimen found at that same
site in Greece measured 5 .02 meters in length.
5 .02 meters. That is 16 .5 feet of solid ivory.
That's insane. A single tusk of that size would
have an estimated life mass of around 137 kilograms
or 302 pounds. That means you have over 600 pounds
of dead weight hanging off the front of this
animal's skull, just in tusks alone. Just imagine
trying to navigate a dense European forest with
two 16 -foot surfboards strapped to your face.
It wouldn't be easy. The turning radius must
have been absolutely terrible. If you get spooked
by something, you can't exactly just whip your
head around without taking out three trees. The
mechanics of simply moving through a landscape
would have dictated its entire lifestyle. Think
about the immense, hyper -developed neck and
shoulder strength required just to lift its head
off the ground to walk. Just to take a step.
Exactly, let alone to use those tusks to interact
with its environment or fight rivals. The muscular
architecture of a its front half must have been
incredibly bulky. Like a massive biological counterweight
to keep the animal from just tipping forward.
Precisely. So with tusks that massive. I have
to wonder, was every single one of these animals
walking around carrying 600 pounds of ivory on
his face or did that vary? Oh, it definitely
varied. We see a drastic level of sexual dimorphism
here. Meaning the males and females looked incredibly
different. Right. In 1958, a fully grown skeleton
was excavated from a sinkhole near Kaltensteinheim
in central Germany. Because of its proportions,
scientists determined it was a female. She had
a shoulder height of about 3 .2 meters, so roughly
10 .5 feet, and weighed an estimated 7 .8 tons.
Wow. So a fully grown female. was literally half
the size of the males. Basically half, yeah.
That is an extreme difference. I mean, a nearly
8 -ton female is still a massive animal by any
modern standard. Predestinately. That's roughly
the size of a very large modern African bull
elephant. But next to a 16 -ton male of her own
species, she would have looked remarkably smaller.
And females also likely had much smaller tusks,
which mirrors the dynamic we see in modern elephants
today. Makes sense. They didn't need the extreme,
exaggerated weaponry that males use for dominance
displays or combat, which probably made foraging
in those dense forests a bit easier for them.
I bet. Nellie. Here's where it gets really interesting,
though. If you look at the title of our source
or any formal scientific paper mentioning this
animal, the word mammoth is always, always written
in quotation marks. Yes, the famous quotation
marks. It's this glaring grammatical anomaly
in the middle of formal scientific classification.
Why are scientists essentially using air quotes
when they talk about this titan? To understand
the quotation marks, we have to look back at
the history of how this animal was named and
the intense debates it sparked. Okay, take us
back. The story starts in 1834. An American naturalist
named Isaac Hayes described a fossilized tooth
discovered in Italy. He named it Mastodon borsoni,
honoring Professor Stefano Borson, who had originally
studied the tooth. But as paleontology advanced
over the decades, scientists tried to organize
these ancient creatures into proper branching
evolutionary family trees. That's when things
got incredibly complicated. Because over the
years, experts argued fiercely about where this
giant belonged. Some argued it was clearly a
species of mammut. Yes. But there's a massive
geographic problem with putting it in the mammut
genus, isn't there? That's exactly the problem.
The type species for the genus mammut is the
American mastodon. Which lived exclusively in
North America. Exactly. So putting Forsen's mastodon
in the exact same genus implies a massive intercontinental
migration. Either the ancestors of the American
mastodon marched from Eurasia over to North America
or vice versa. Did they? Some historical scientists
really champion this idea, but there is absolutely
zero fossil evidence to support a migration of
mammoth across the Bering Strait land bridge.
So if they didn't march across continents, how
do we end up with two animals on opposite sides
of the planet that looks so incredibly similar
that scientists initially insisted on giving
them the exact same name? This brings us to a
beautiful concept in evolutionary biology called
parallel evolution. Parallel evolution. Right.
The similarities between the North American mastodons
and the Eurasian mammoth borsoni. aren't because
they are direct, immediate siblings. They independently
evolved similar traits from a much older, shared
ancestor. In this case, that shared ancestor
is likely a preacher called Xigalophon Turicensis.
Xigalophon Turicensis. Exactly. The two lineages
split and were separated for millions of years.
But because both Brimsk were facing similar environmental
pressures on their respective continents browsing
in dense forests, supporting massive body weights,
They essentially found the exact same evolutionary
solutions completely independent of one another.
That's like two different chefs on completely
opposite sides of the world independently inventing
the exact same recipe for chocolate cake. That's
a great way to put it. They taste the same, they
look the same, but their kitchens have completely
different origins. And the scientific community
recognized this issue. If they officially grouped
them together in the genus mammoth, it would
ruin the evolutionary family tree. It would make
it inaccurate. It would create what's called
a polyphaletic group. Think of it like putting
a shark and a dolphin in the same biological
family folder, just because they both have fins
and swim in the ocean. Oh, I see. They look similar
on the outside. But their evolutionary blueprints
are completely different. The quotation marks
are the scientific community's way of saying,
we know this creature looks exactly like a mammoth,
but we also know it's technically an evolutionary
imposter. An imposter. Yes. And until we create
a perfect new category for it, we're using this
as a placeholder. So if it's an evolutionary
imposter, a creature just wearing a mammoth disguise,
does its skeleton give away the secret? When
you look past the sheer size of the animal, What
do the bones actually tell us about who it really
was? The skeleton is the dead giveaway. Mammut
Borsoni is essentially a paleontological Frankenstein's
monster. Frankenstein's monster. Yes. Its anatomy
is a bizarre, fascinating mix of its ancient
ancestors and its parallel cousins. If you look
at bones like the ulna and radius in the forearm
or the femur in the thigh, the shapes look incredibly
similar to the American mastodon. But if you
look at the humerus in the upper arm or the tibia
in the lower leg, those bones hold on to the
primitive shapes of its much older ancestor,
Zygolophodon. Wow, so it really is a mix and
match. The source also mentions the bones were
surprisingly graceful, meaning relatively slender
for an animal of this size. And there's some
really weird specifics in the joints too, right?
Yeah, instead of throwing complex anatomical
jargon around, think about your own elbow. All
right, I'm thinking about it. Now imagine the
bony tip of your elbow projecting out sideways,
incredibly thick and heavily muscled. That sounds
painful. Well, for them, that's the kind of highly
specialized joint modification they needed. It
was likely to support the sheer weight and mechanical
stress of its massive front half. We see this
mix and match anatomy in the skull and jaw as
well. Like with the cusks. Right. The upper tusks
completely lack the enamel bands that were present
in its ancestors. What about the jaws themselves?
With an animal this big, eating must have been
a full -time job. Did they have a specialized
setup for chewing? They apparently lacked permanent
premolar teeth, which older, more primitive mastodons
had. And the lower jaw is particularly interesting.
The frontmost part is relatively short, but the
weirdest part is the variation. Some individuals
of Borson's mastodon still retain small, lower
tusks. Like a second set of tusks. Yeah, that
German female specimen we talked about had lower
tusks about six inches long, but other individuals
seem to have had completely tuskless lower jaws.
That's wild. It really paints a picture of a
species in the messy midst of an evolutionary
transition. Okay, so we've built this colossal
16 -ton body. with 16 .5 -foot tusks, a mix -and
-match skeleton, and placeholder quotation marks
around its name. But what was going on inside
its head? Do we actually know anything about
its brain? We do, and it is an extraordinary
piece of the puzzle. A brain case was discovered
in Moldova that preserved the internal hollow
space occupied by the brain. What scientists
call an endocat. Exactly. When we look at that
Moldovan brain case, we have to talk about the
encephalization quotient, or EQ. EQ. Right, EQ
is a way of measuring brain size relative to...
to total body mass. Despite this animal weighing
up to 16 tons, scientists estimate the brain
of the Moldovan specimen weighed only about 4
.7 kilograms. Weight. That is roughly 10 pounds.
10 pounds in a 35 ,000 pound body. Yes. When
you compare that to modern elephants, Borson's
mastodon had a significantly lower EQ. Its brain
was proportionally much, much smaller. That is
a tiny brain for such a massive animal. It is,
but smaller doesn't mean useless. The shape of
the endocast is highly revealing. The areas responsible
for higher order thinking weren't massive, but
it shows a prominently developed temporal lobe.
Okay. Even more striking, the front tips of the
olfactory bulbs, the part of the brain dedicated
to processing smells, are clearly visible and
massive. Huge olfactory bulbs. Yes. In the American
mastodon, those olfactory bulbs are way less
prominent. We think of elephants today as highly
emotional, intelligent creatures that mourn their
dead, use tools, and solve complex puzzles. But
this titan was playing a completely different
evolutionary game, wasn't it? It really was.
It didn't need a supercomputer for a brain. It
was an animal deeply, profoundly tied to its
sense of smell. Fascinating. You have to imagine
this multi -storied giant moving through ancient
forests, largely guided by a highly sensitive
nose, sniffing out specific types of foliage,
finding water sources in droughts, and locating
mates across vast distances. So it wasn't solving
puzzles. No, it survived for millions. of years
by being the biggest, heaviest, best smelling
tank in the forest. It interpreted its massive
world through a sophisticated chemical landscape
of sense rather than relying purely on complex
problem solving. And what a world it was. Let's
map out the neighborhood this giant lived in.
Where exactly did this biological tank roam and
for how long? Its domain was vast. Fossils have
been found everywhere from the Iberian Peninsula
in Western Europe all the way across to Greece,
Ukraine, Turkey, and even as far east as Shaanxi
in northern China. So practically across the
entire Eurasian landmass. Pretty much. It spanned
an incredible stretch of time, roaming from the
late Miocene around 9 to 7 million years ago,
all the way to the early Pleistocene roughly
2 to 2 .5 million years ago. A run of up to 7
million years is hugely successful. for any species.
To fuel a 16 -ton body for that many millions
of years, what exactly were they eating? Scientists
used techniques like dental microware, looking
at the microscopic scratches left on fossilized
teeth, as well as isotopic analysis of the bones.
And what did they find? These techniques revealed
that mammut bursonia was a dedicated browser.
It wasn't grazing on tough ground grasses like
a modern cow. It was using its immense height
to access leaves, twigs, and woody plants in
the canopies of... temperate Pliocene forests.
Now, I want everyone to picture the daily life
of this browsing titan. It wasn't alone in those
temperate European forests. What else was walking
around in this neighborhood? It sounds like an
ancient, surreal safari. Picture this 16 -ton
giant casually stripping an entire massive branch
of its leaves. Walking through the underbrush
nearby is an ancient tapir. The tapir. There's
a bizarre extinct species of rhinoceros called
Stephanorhinus sharing the clearings. Wow. If
you look up into the trees our mastodon is eating
from, you might see a species of monkey called
Mesopithecus. Monkeys, rhinos, and tapirs in
places like modern -day France, Germany, or Greece.
It's completely wild. But it wasn't just a peaceful
herbivore paradise, was it? What were the predators
like? The predator dynamics in this ecosystem
were intense. Sharing those same forests were
giant cheetahs, Essononix pardinensis, and a
fearsome saber -toothed cat called Homotherium.
Giant cheetahs and saber -toothed cats. Now,
a saber -toothed cat isn't going to take down
a healthy 16 -ton adult male mastodon. The sheer
size of Borson's mastodon made adults virtually
immune to predation. Right, nothing is attacking
that. But those predators would have absolutely
targeted the calves or the sick, which means
the mastodons would have had to be hypervigilant,
using that incredible sense of smell to detect
a saber -tooth hiding in the tall brush. And
they even shared the forest with other giant
elephant relatives, too. The source mentions
Anancus, another massive creature with a browsing
diet. Yes, Anancus was a major part of that world.
It paints a picture of a vibrant, highly diverse,
ancient European ecosystem that feels utterly
alien to us today. Yet, for millions of years,
this deeply intertwined community of giant mammals
was a stable reality. It was a functioning, thriving
world that existed long before humans ever arrived
on the scene. It was a world of giants that operated
in a completely different ecological rhythm than
anything we can observe today. As we wrap up
this deep dive into the source material, let's
look back at the key aha moments we've uncovered.
We started with the sheer mind -bending scale.
A 16 -ton animal carrying 16 .5 -foot tusks that
weighed 300 pounds each, requiring insane muscular
engineering just to walk. Incredible engineering.
We unraveled the mystery of its quotation mark
name, discovering how parallel evolution allowed
two different lineages to independently build
almost the exact same biological machine on two
different continents. The evolutionary imposter.
Exactly. We peeked inside its skull to find a
relatively tiny 10 -pound brain that prioritized
a hyper -powerful sense of smell over complex
intelligence. And we placed it right in the middle
of a wild ancient Europe filled with giant cheetahs,
monkeys, and saber -toothed cats. Synthesizing
all of this raises an important question, one
that touches on the very nature of history and
deep time. What's that? We only know that Mamet
Borsoni existed. We only know that it was perhaps
the largest land mammal ever to walk the earth
because of a few scattered teeth, some partial
skeletons buried in Greek dirt and a single preserved
brain case in Moldova. Just fragments. That is
all that remains of an evolutionary dynasty that
lasted millions of years. It leaves you wondering
if a creature this massive, this widespread and
this successful can completely vanish into the
depths of deep time, leaving behind little more
than a taxonomic puzzle with quotation marks
around its name. What massive realities. of our
current world, what defining giants of our modern
era might be completely invisible to the scientists
of the distant future. That is an absolutely
brilliant thought to leave everyone with today.
It really puts our own place in the grand timeline
of Earth into perspective. Thank you so much
for joining us on this deep dive into the source
material. We hope you walk away today feeling
a little more connected to the ancient, giant
history of our planet. Keep asking questions,
keep looking at the world with curiosity, and
keep digging into the fascinating mysteries of
the past. Catch you on the next deep dive.