Darwin's branching "tree of life" diagram made for a nice, simple, easy-to-understand, convenient myth. It has sent scientists on a wild tree chase ever since.
A new study of elephants, mammoths and mastodons show they were all interfertile or capable of hybridization. Our present world is impoverished of elephants, or “elephantids” as scientists dub the family. Mammoths and mastodons roamed throughout America and Asia, evidenced by the massive fossil beds, where millions of mammoth bones can be found in permafrost. […]