mastodon

Meaning

Noun

• Extinct elephant-like mammal of the genus Mammut that flourished worldwide from Miocene through Pleistocene times; differs from elephants and mammoths in the form of the molar teeth.

Origin

• First attested 1813, from the New Latin genus name Mastodon (1806), coined by French naturalist Georges Cuvier, from Ancient Greek μαστός + ὀδούς, from the similarity of the mammilloid projections on the crowns of the extinct mammal's molars.