“Mastodons existed in the Americas, but are known to have gone extinct by 10,000 B.C. Elephants are mentioned twice in a single verse in the earliest Book of Mormon record, the Book of Ether. Mastodons and mammoths lived long ago in the New World, however, as with the prehistoric horse, the archaeological record indicates that they became extinct along with most of the megafauna in the New World around 10,000 BC. The source of this extinction is speculated to be the result of human predation, a significant climate change, or a combination of both factors. A very small population of mammoths survived on St. Paul Island, Alaska, up until 3700 BC, but is still several thousand years before the time period where "elephants" are mentioned in the Book of Mormon.
First of all, the use of megafauna suggests that all animals larger than a human were no longer in existent, including deer, elk, moose, buffalo, bears, etc., which are considered in the megafauna category. This, obviously, is totally inaccurate. The critic probably meant that elephants were no longer in existence, but many other category animals of 100 pounds or more did exist in the New World prior to the Spaniards. It is also interesting that the critics constant use of mammoths and mastadons for the term “elephant,” which tends to lead one to think of very ancient animals, their existence only known to the average person in drawings and pictures.
It is also mentioned by critics that the Quaternary extinction event was the cause of the disappearance of the horse, elephant, and other large animals from the New World around 10,000 B.C. For those who accept this idea, perhaps you might want to know that this Quaternary period in the geologic time scale, dating as far back as 2.588 million years ago, supposedly saw the extinction of numerous predominantly larger species, many of which occurred during the transition from the Pleistocene to the Holocene epoch. However, the extinction wave did not stop at the end of the Pleistocene, but continued in the Holocene extinctions. Among the main causes hypothesized by paleontologists are natural climate change and overkill by humans, who appeared during this epoch. A variant of this last possibility is the second-order predation hypothesis, which focuses more on the indirect damage caused by over-competition with nonhuman predators. The spread of disease is also discussed as a possible reason.
Please note the use of the words hypothesized, supposedly and possible. We are dealing here with assumptions, guesses, and pure speculation based on nothing but man’s interpretation of hypothesized guesswork.
The point is, no one knows when the elephant became extinct in the Western Hemisphere, Since no remains have been found, and the Spaniards who, by the way, saw perhaps 1% of the Western Hemisphere land mass, if not less, did not speak of them, science claims the animal did not exist here except in ancient times, long before the Book of Mormon record. How they think they know that is another problem in and of itself (see the book “Scientific Fallacies and Other Myths”).
The first elephant species on record to be tamed was the Asian Elephant, for use in agriculture, and also for labor. Elephant taming is not full domestication, as they were still captured in the wild, rather than being bred in captivity and began in any of three different places. 
The oldest evidence of the use of so-called "tamed" elephants is in a Mesopotamian relief, around 4,500 years ago, or about 2500 B.C., a little before the time of the Jaredites. Whether elephants were used to help build the Tower of Babel it is not known, but since they existed in Mesopotamia about that time, it is likely they were used for heavy labor, as depicted. Thus, when the Jaredites brought elephants with them (Ether 9:19), it is not an anachronism for their existence. And since it cannot be proved that elephants did not exist in the Western Hemisphere after 10,000 B.C., and, indeed, up through the Jaredite period, then there can be no anachronism at all. In addition, carvings of elephants appear on several stelae, walls, and statues at Tiwanaku near Lake Titicaca along the Bolivian-Peru border (see earlier posts on Tiwanaku).It might also be noted, that the word elephant is not mentioned at any time in the Nephite record. Nor did Nephi list the elephant among the animals they found upon landing in the Land of Promise. Thus, for whatever reason, the elephant was evidently gone by the time of the Nephites. Obviously, then, the Spaniards would not have seen any elephants when they arrived—which only suggests that the Nephites did not have any elephants.
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