Mislabeling
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An elephantine blunder was committed in the science briefs (Metro, March 7) when mammoths and mastodons were mislabeled “extinct elephants.”
African and Indian elephants are subsumed under the genus elephantidae . Although mammoths and mastodons are elephant-like mammals, they are of a different genus, mammuthus and mammut , respectively.
These eoelephants (dawn elephants) were the precursors of today’s tusker--but an elephant can’t be considered extinct before it evolves.
I hope your staff writers are not too thick-skinned to take kindly to gentle criticism.
VICTOR STEELE
Los Angeles
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