The Booby-Toothed Mastodon

I've had a bit of a rough weekend, but I did read something last night that brought a smile to my face. I was reading Paul Semonin's American Monster and I came across an unintentionally amusing quote from Thomas Jefferson, taken from one of Jefferson's letters to Willson Peale. The subject of the letter was what the name of the animal previously known as the "American incognitum," "Ohio animal," or mammoth should be called, Peale being unsure about a new moniker even though Georges Cuvier had shown the American mastodon to be distinct from the Siberian mammoth several years earlier (and had named them as such). Jefferson replied to Peale that a name change was indeed warranted, writing;

I have no doubt that the marked differences between the elephant & our colossal animal entitle him to a distinct appellation. One of these differences & a striking one, is in the protuberances on the grinding surface of the teeth, somewhat in the shape of the mamma, mastos, or breast of a woman, which has induced Cuvier to call it the Mastodonte, or bubby-toothed.