Yesterday we all went into Mrs. Russell’s classroom to see the matrix.

From New York state.

Yesterday we all went into the big classroom to look at matrix from Cornell University in New York State. We looked for twigs, shells, leaves, seeds, hairs, bark, and fossils.

Mastodons

Mastodons lived 9000+ years ago. We got some of the matrix of one of them which died about 9000 years ago. They lived in North America. They travelled to other continents in the northern hemisphere.

They had long thick reddish brown hair to keep themselves warm during hard times. They were big but their cousins the mammoths were a lot bigger and hairier than the Mastodons. Their tusks were more like the elephant today than like the mammoths curly tusks. They had cusps on their teeth and each tooth was huge. They also had three toes not big clumpy feet like an elephant. They weighed in between one and one and a half tons. They weighed about the same as an elephant today.

They travelled to other contents by using land bridges. These are big areas of ice that join other continents together. That’s how they travelled to Europe, Asia and Africa. Sometimes they would get stuck in a continent because the ice would melt.

We know this much about them because scientists would take a careful look at the bones of a Mastodon. They look at full skeletons to find out how heavy they are. If they cut a bit out of the tusk they can find out how old they are by counting the rings.

THE MASTODON

The Mastodon lived about 9000 plus years ago. Their habitat was destroyed by man and by forest fires. No one knows how the fires started but there might be one good reason why the fires started from lightening, man, volcanic activity and the heat from the sun.

The Mastodon probably weighed over 2 tonnes and was very slow and easy to hunt. The Mastodon was part of the Elephant family. It was very hairy because it was so cold. Its tusks were not as curly as the Mammoths they were straighter. They crossed from continent to continent on the land bridges. We know so much about Mastodons because of their skeletons.

WALKING WITH MASTODONS

The Mastodons lived on earth about 9000 plus years ago. They looked a bit like elephants with their tusks the Mastodons were very hairy. The mastodon’s head alone weighed 1 ton so think what they weigh altogether! The other name for Mastodons is Mastodont, I think that the name has got to do with their teeth. Their tusks are kind of like an elephants. Their hair was kind of reddy brown and I think that it was also soft but we won’t know because it died out about 9000 plus years. That was why we won’t know if their hair was soft. They travelled to other continents by going over ice bridges or land bridges.

One of the last Mastodons was tying to get over one of these ice or land bridges and he fell in the ice. It tried to get out but when it is under water like that it will fall in because of his weight that is what caused the Mastodon to die. We know so much about them by their bones. The bones give us lots of information but we owe it all to scientists because they check out all the data like how long ago they died.

Yesterday we all went into Mrs Russell’s classroom. And we were looking at matrix from Cornell university in America. We found grass and shells.

Studying mastodon matrix.

Two days ago Mrs Lindsay got a package from Cornell university in New York state and in the package there was a video and two bags of mastodon matrix and we all search it and we found shells and twigs leaves seeds hairs bark and some fossils.

Yesterday we all went in to the big classroom to do matrix from Cornell University New York State. We were finding out about fossils. We found bark twigs hairs and seeds.

Studying Matrix

On Thursday we looked at some matrix that Mrs. Lindsay got from Cornell University, in New York State, USA. We were put into groups to find out what the world was like when mastodons lived.

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