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Size
The general name of "mammoth" refers to several types of giant, prehistoric elephants, but it's the woolly mammoth in particular that we have a distinctive picture of today, thanks to cave drawings left by Cro-Magnon people in the south of France. The woolly mammoth had a shoulder height of about 9 feet, with a black, shaggy outer coat of fur and a thicker, "woolly" undercoat. The imperial mammoth of the North American plains could stand up to 13 1/2 feet. Mammoths also were known for their long trunks and upward-curved tusks. The varieties of mastodon were different in that they possessed no coat of hair, and ranged in size from just over 4 feet to the size of modern elephants. The long-jawed mastodons were notable for their elongated faces and four separate tusks, although their mastodon descendants possessed only two.
Origins
While the larger imperial mammoths roamed the North American Great Plains, the woolly (or "Siberian") mammoth was found throughout the Northern Hemisphere all over the world. Tens of thousands of the animal's fossils have been found among the Siberian plains. The mastodons, however, were dwellers of the forest, spreading out all over Europe, Asia and North America. The earliest known forms of the mastodon (the long-jawed variety) existed during the Oligocene epoch (22-39 million years ago) on the continent of Africa, parts of which were still classified as a tropical zone.
Feeding
The fossilized teeth of both mastodons and mammoths can tell us much about the differences in their feeding habits and lifestyles. The molars on a mammoth feature thin, parallel ridges, which made them ideal for grinding coarse grass. The woolly mammoth, then, was a grazer, likely using its expansive, 16-foot tusks to clear the ground of snow to find suitable land on which to feed. The fossilized molars of mastodons tell quite a different story. Their teeth were marked by series of conical cusps with tough, enamel covered crowns, making them perfect for browsing -- that is, gathering leaves and branches from trees with their prehensile trunks.
Extinction
One commonality between the woolly mammoth and mastodon is that they became the prey -- albeit, in separate times and places -- of both Homo erectus and Homo sapiens, which includes Neanderthals. This widespread hunting contributed to both species' extinction. Scientists have discovered mammoth kill sites that are more than 40,000 years old, containing primitive butchering tools, and it is believed the hunter-gatherers of the Paleolithic Era (from 10,000 B.C. to 2.5 million years ago) hunted the mammoth to extinction. Likewise did early humans find the value in hunting down every last mastodon throughout the late Pleistocene epoch (about 10,000 years ago) -- their imposing size offering a higher food return than small prey.