Distinctive age profiles result from certain types of mortality processes that affect modern African elephants. Large collections of fossil proboscidean bones sometimes have similar age profiles -- for example, those of the Lehner and Dent assemblages are identical to age profiles seen in modern drought-caused die-offs. Two other samples of mammoths (one from the Fairbanks muck deposits and one from a site near Waco, Texas) have age profiles suggestive of a stable age distribution in a mature population, resulting in the first case from long-term attritional mortality, and in the other case from sudden catastrophic mortality. Other fossil proboscidean age profiles that show high proportions of prime-age adults may have resulted from prolonged or recurring die-offs. -- AATA