@RayReignAladdin
"A species of Wooly mammoth was done in by a bad case of toothache"
That could be a contributor. Mastodon literally means "nipple tooth" and their teeth were highly specialized for eating trees. However, mastadons weren't a species of mammoth, they were very different. On the Proboscidea phylogenetic tree, Indian and African Elephants are far closer related to mammoths than mastodons were.