The claim of the Book of Ether in the Book of Mormon that the earliest Jaredites found “elephants” in this land has not in the past been supported by good evidence. Elephants (mastodons or mammoths) have long been known in North America (including Mexico), but until recently the remains have been dated no later than about 8000 B.C. Now the carbon-14 method of dating provides evidence on the early Cochise food-gathering culture of southern Arizona, showing that the stage of its development contemporaneous with elephants extended down to at least 4000 B.C. and possibly later. In the moist lands of Mesoamerica elephants and other large Pleistocene animals certainly lived later than in the drying Southwest. In fact, recent discoveries show that the camel, sloth, giant bison, horse, and perhaps other Pleistocene animals of the New World lived much later in Mexico and Central America than had been supposed, in other words quite possibly into Book of Mormon times.