After ginormous mastodon bones were found on a farm in Southern Indiana last week, Hoosiers are wondering what, exactly, the Ice Age creatures were.

What is a mastodon?

The consensus: You really wouldn't want to fight this thing.

Think a prehistoric elephant that weighs as much as a small jet, skulks in swamps and breaks rib bones in fights over lady mastodons.

Mastodons arrived on Earth between 27 and 30 million years ago, and are ancient relatives of today's elephants. They stoodbetween 8 and 10 feet tall and weighed between 4 and 6 tons.That makes them a little smaller than modern African elephants.

But don't worry: These monsters didn't eat meat but leaves, twigs, grasses and tree bark.

What does the name 'mastodon' mean?

"Nipple tooth."

We aren't kidding:

Blame French naturalist Georges Cuvier, who so christened the beast in the early 19th century because of its breast-like teeth protrusions, according to Wired.

What did the mastodon look like?

Like an elephant with small ears, a downsized trunk, longer tusks and a tribble-like toupee atop its head.

The forehead was smaller than an elephant's, and hair on a mastodon's coat could grow up to nearly 35 inches long. Male tusks could stretch up to 8 feet, though lady mastodons didn't have tusks.

How many mastodons were there in Indiana?

“Indiana is a mastodon state,” Ron Richards, senior research curator of paleobiology for the Indiana State Museum and Historic Sites, said on the museum website in 2018. “We are among several states in the southern Great Lakes region where mastodons were once abundant, and their remains are often discovered.”

Mastodons primarily roamed North and Central America, though they turned up on every continent except Antarctica and Australia. Indiana's swampy marshes were perfectly suited for these forest lovers, who made their homes in woodlands near the bogs.

Mastodon bones have been found in nearly all of Indiana's 92 counties, primarily in central and northern Indiana, according to the State Museum. The State Museum's 13,500-year-old mastodon skeleton, "Fred," was dug up in Fort Wayne in 1998.

What's the difference between a mastodon and a mammoth?

Mammoths were much, much hairier than mastodons; they're called woolly for a reason.

Other indications that you've got a mammoth on your hands are flat teeth (mastodons' are cone-shaped) and tusks that angle down and then curve up (mastodons' are straight).

Mastodons are the older and slightly smaller of the two, dating back approximately 27 million to 30 million years in North and Central America. Mammoths only broke onto the scene 5.1 million years ago in Africa.

When did mastodons die?

They've been extinct for at least 10,000 years.

No one can say exactly why the beasts died en masse, but scientists think it's likely they were either over-hunted by humans or victims of a changing climate. The uber-furry mastodon was not exactly well-suited, after all, for the post-Ice Age warm-up. Other researchers think a tuberculosis pandemic might be to blame.

It was probably a combination of the three. Disease might've made the animals weak, and less well-equipped to survive the hunters and no-warning warm-up.

Where can I see mastodon bones in Indiana?

The Indiana State Museum and Historic Sites has the largest collection in the state, and even boasts a full skeleton nicknamed "Fred."

Email IndyStar reporter Sarah Bahr at sbahr@gannett.com. Follow her on Twitter and Instagram @smbahr14.