Cuvieronius

Cuvieronius is an extinct New World genus of gomphothere which ranged from southern North America to northwestern South America during the Pleistocene epoch. Reaching a shoulder height of and a body mass of , it was comparable in size to an Asian elephant. Cuvieronius inhabited subtropical and tropical latitudes in environments ranging from grasslands to tropical rainforest. Among the last gomphotheres along with the South American Notiomastodon, it became extinct as part of the end Pleistocene-extinction event, approximately 12-11,000 years ago, along with most other large mammals in the Americas. The extinctions followed the arrival of humans to the Americas, and evidence has been found for human hunting of Cuvieronius, which may have been a factor in its extinction.

== Taxonomy == The species now known as Cuvieronius hyodon was among the first fossil animals from the New World to be studied. The first remains of this species were recovered from Ecuador by Alexander von Humboldt, at a location the local population referred to as the "Field of Giants". Humboldt recognized that, rather than being bones of giant humans as had been thought by the local population and previous Spanish colonists, they were similar to the giant elephants (Mastodon) being described from Ohio. Humboldt sent teeth that he had collected from Mexico, Ecuador, and Chile to French anatomist Georges Cuvier, who classified the teeth into two species, which he referred to as the "mastodonte des cordilières" and the "mastodonte humboldtien", in an 1806 paper. It was not until 1824 that Cuvier formally named the species. He referred both to the genus Mastodon, calling them M. andium and M. humboldtii.