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Dwarf Elephant

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Dwarf elephant



 
 
Fossil
Fossil

Fossils are the preserved remains or trace fossil of animals, plants, and other organisms from the remote past. The totality of fossils, both discovered and undiscovered, and their placement in fossiliferous Rock formations and sedimentary rock layers is known as the fossil record....
 remains of dwarf elephants have been found on the Mediterranean islands of Cyprus
Cyprus

Cyprus , officially the Republic of Cyprus , is an island country situated in the eastern Mediterranean Sea, east of Greece, west of Lebanon, Syria, and Israel, south of Turkey and north of Egypt....
, Malta
Malta

Malta , officially the Republic of Malta , is a densely populated developed country European microstates microstate in the European Union....
 (at Ghar Dalam
Ghar Dalam

Ghar Dalam is an extraordinary prehistorical cul de sac containing the bone remains of animals that were stranded and subsequently became extinct on Malta at the end of the Ice age....
), Crete
Crete

Crete is the largest of the Greek islands and the List of islands in the Mediterranean largest island in the Mediterranean Sea at 8,336 km? ....
, Sicily
Sicily

Sicily is an Autonomous regions with special statute of Italy. Of all the regions of Italy, Sicily covers the largest land area at 25,708 km? and currently has just over five million inhabitants....
, Sardinia
Sardinia

Sardinia is the Mediterranean islands#By area island in the Mediterranean Sea . The area of Sardinia is . The island is surrounded by the France island of Corsica, the Italian Peninsula, Tunisia and the Balearic Islands....
, the Cyclades Islands
Cyclades

The Cyclades are a Greece island group in the Aegean Sea, south-east of the mainland of Greece; and an administrative prefectures of Greece of Greece....
 and the Dodecanese Islands. Other islands where dwarf elephants have been found are Sulawesi
Sulawesi

Sulawesi is one of the four larger Sunda Islands of Indonesia and is situated between Borneo and the Maluku Islands....
, Flores
Flores

Flores is one of the Lesser Sunda Islands, an island arc with an estimated area of 14,300 km? extending east from the Java island of Indonesia....
, Timor
Timor

Timor is an island at the south end of the Malay Archipelago, north of the Timor Sea. It is divided between the independent state of East Timor, , and West Timor, belonging to the Indonesian province of East Nusa Tenggara....
 and other islands of the Lesser Sundas. The Channel Islands of California once supported a dwarf species descended from Columbian mammoth
Columbian Mammoth

The 'Columbian Mammoth' is an extinct species of elephant that appeared in North America during the late Pleistocene, It is believed by some people to be the same species as its slightly larger cousin, M....
s, while small races of woolly mammoth
Woolly mammoth

The woolly mammoth , also called the tundra mammoth, is an extinct species of mammoth. This animal is known from bones and frozen carcasses from northern North America and northern Eurasia with the best preserved carcasses in Siberia....
s were once found on Wrangel Island
Wrangel Island

Wrangel Island is an island in the Arctic Ocean, between the Chukchi Sea and East Siberian Sea. Wrangel Island lies astride the 180th meridian meridian ....
 and Saint Paul Island.

Mediterranean Islands
Dwarf elephants were once part of the Pleistocene
Pleistocene

The Pleistocene is the epoch from 1.8 million to 10,000 years Before Present covering the world's recent period of repeated glaciations. The name pleistocene is derived from the Greek and ....
 fauna of all the larger Mediterranean islands, with the apparent exception of Corsica
Corsica

Corsica is the Mediterranean islands#By area in the Mediterranean Sea . It is located west of Italy, southeast of the France mainland, and north of the island of Sardinia....
.






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Fossil
Fossil

Fossils are the preserved remains or trace fossil of animals, plants, and other organisms from the remote past. The totality of fossils, both discovered and undiscovered, and their placement in fossiliferous Rock formations and sedimentary rock layers is known as the fossil record....
 remains of dwarf elephants have been found on the Mediterranean islands of Cyprus
Cyprus

Cyprus , officially the Republic of Cyprus , is an island country situated in the eastern Mediterranean Sea, east of Greece, west of Lebanon, Syria, and Israel, south of Turkey and north of Egypt....
, Malta
Malta

Malta , officially the Republic of Malta , is a densely populated developed country European microstates microstate in the European Union....
 (at Ghar Dalam
Ghar Dalam

Ghar Dalam is an extraordinary prehistorical cul de sac containing the bone remains of animals that were stranded and subsequently became extinct on Malta at the end of the Ice age....
), Crete
Crete

Crete is the largest of the Greek islands and the List of islands in the Mediterranean largest island in the Mediterranean Sea at 8,336 km? ....
, Sicily
Sicily

Sicily is an Autonomous regions with special statute of Italy. Of all the regions of Italy, Sicily covers the largest land area at 25,708 km? and currently has just over five million inhabitants....
, Sardinia
Sardinia

Sardinia is the Mediterranean islands#By area island in the Mediterranean Sea . The area of Sardinia is . The island is surrounded by the France island of Corsica, the Italian Peninsula, Tunisia and the Balearic Islands....
, the Cyclades Islands
Cyclades

The Cyclades are a Greece island group in the Aegean Sea, south-east of the mainland of Greece; and an administrative prefectures of Greece of Greece....
 and the Dodecanese Islands. Other islands where dwarf elephants have been found are Sulawesi
Sulawesi

Sulawesi is one of the four larger Sunda Islands of Indonesia and is situated between Borneo and the Maluku Islands....
, Flores
Flores

Flores is one of the Lesser Sunda Islands, an island arc with an estimated area of 14,300 km? extending east from the Java island of Indonesia....
, Timor
Timor

Timor is an island at the south end of the Malay Archipelago, north of the Timor Sea. It is divided between the independent state of East Timor, , and West Timor, belonging to the Indonesian province of East Nusa Tenggara....
 and other islands of the Lesser Sundas. The Channel Islands of California once supported a dwarf species descended from Columbian mammoth
Columbian Mammoth

The 'Columbian Mammoth' is an extinct species of elephant that appeared in North America during the late Pleistocene, It is believed by some people to be the same species as its slightly larger cousin, M....
s, while small races of woolly mammoth
Woolly mammoth

The woolly mammoth , also called the tundra mammoth, is an extinct species of mammoth. This animal is known from bones and frozen carcasses from northern North America and northern Eurasia with the best preserved carcasses in Siberia....
s were once found on Wrangel Island
Wrangel Island

Wrangel Island is an island in the Arctic Ocean, between the Chukchi Sea and East Siberian Sea. Wrangel Island lies astride the 180th meridian meridian ....
 and Saint Paul Island.

Mediterranean Islands


Dwarf elephants were once part of the Pleistocene
Pleistocene

The Pleistocene is the epoch from 1.8 million to 10,000 years Before Present covering the world's recent period of repeated glaciations. The name pleistocene is derived from the Greek and ....
 fauna of all the larger Mediterranean islands, with the apparent exception of Corsica
Corsica

Corsica is the Mediterranean islands#By area in the Mediterranean Sea . It is located west of Italy, southeast of the France mainland, and north of the island of Sardinia....
. Mediterranean dwarf elephants have generally been considered as paleoloxodontine
Palaeoloxodon

Palaeoloxodon is an extinct subgenus of elephants, containing the various species of straight-tusked elephant. Its species' remains have been found in Bilzingsleben , Germany; Cyprus; Japan; Sicily; Malta; and recently in England during the excavation of the second Channel Tunnel....
, derived from the continental Straight-tusked Elephant
Straight-tusked Elephant

The Straight-tusked Elephant is an extinct species of elephant closely related to the living Asian Elephant. It inhabited Europe during the Middle and Late Pleistocene ....
, Elephas (Palaeoloxodon) antiquus Falconer
Hugh Falconer

Hugh Falconer Medical Doctor, Royal Society , was a distinguished Scotland geologist, botanist, palaeontologist and paleoanthropologist. He studied the flora, fauna and geology of India, Assam and Burma, and made the first discovery of the modern evolutionary theory of punctuated equilibrium....
 & Cautley
Proby Cautley

Sir Proby Thomas Cautley Knight Commander of the Order of the Bath , England engineer and palaeontologist, born in Suffolk, is best known for conceiving and building the Ganga canal in India, which starts at Haridwar....
, 1847. An exception is the dwarf Sardinian Mammoth
Mammoth

A mammoth is any species of the extinct genus Mammuthus. These proboscideans are members of the Elephantidae and close relatives of modern elephants....
, Mammuthus lamarmorae (Major, 1883), the only endemic elephant of the Mediterranean islands belonging to the mammoth line. A DNA research published in 2006 theorized that the Elephas creticus could be from the mammoth line too. This old theory, proposed by Dorothea Bate
Dorothea Bate

Dorothea Minola Alice Bate Geological Society of London , also known as Dorothy Bate, was a United Kingdom palaeontologist, a pioneer of archaeozoology....
 as early as 1905, is not widely accepted. A scientific study of 2007 demonstrates the mistakes of the DNA research of 2006.

During low sea levels, the Mediterranean islands were colonised again and again, giving rise, sometimes on the same island, to several species (or subspecies) of different body sizes. These endemic dwarf elephants were taxonomically different on each island or group of very close islands, like the Cyclades archipelago.

There are many uncertainties about the time of colonisation, the phylogenetic relationships and the taxonomic status of dwarf elephants on the Mediterranean islands. Extinction of the insular dwarf elephants has not been correlated with the arrival in the islands of man. Furthermore, it has been suggested that the finding of skeletons of such elephants sparked the idea that they belonged to giant cyclops
Cyclops

In Greek mythology and later Roman mythology, a cyclops , is a member of a primordial race of giant , each with a single eye in the middle of its forehead....
es, because the center nasal opening was thought to be a cyclopic eye socket.

Sardinia

  • Mammuthus lamarmorae (Major, 1883)
  • Elephas antiquus (Acconci, 1881)
  • Elephas melitensis (Caria, 1965)


Sicily & Malta

  • Elephas (Palaeoloxodon) antiquus leonardii Aguirre, 1969
  • Elephas (Palaeoloxodon) mnaidriensis
    Elephas mnaidriensis

    Elephas mnaidriensis or Palaeoloxodon mnaidriensis is an extinct species of elephant from Sicily closely related to the modern Asian elephant....
     (Adams, 1874)
  • Elephas (Palaeoloxodon) melitensis Falconer, 1868
  • Elephas (Palaeoloxodon) falconeri
    Elephas falconeri

    Elephas falconeri is an extinct Sicily-Malta species of elephant closely related to the modern Asian elephant. In 1867 George Busk had proposed the species Elephas falconeri for many of the smallest molars selected from the material originally ascribed by Hugh Falconer to Elephas melitensis....
     Busk, 1867


Crete

  • Elephas (Palaeoloxodon) creticus (Bate, 1907)
  • Elephas (Palaeoloxodon) creutzburgi (Kyuss
    Kyuss

    'Kyuss' was an influential stoner rock/desert rock band, originally from Palm Desert, California. After forming in the late 1980s and releasing an EP under the name Sons of Kyuss in 1990, the band shortened its name to Kyuss....
    , 1965)
  • Elephas (Palaeoloxodon) chaniensis (Symeonides et al., 2001)


After DNA research, published in 2006, it has been proposed to rename Elephas (Palaeoloxodon) creticus into Mammuthus creticus (Bate, 1907). Others proposed (in 2002) to rename all the described specimens of larger size under the new subspecies name Elephas antiquus creutzburgi (Kuss, 1965). In a recent study of 2007, it was argued for the groundlessness of the theory by Poulakakis et al. in 2006, showing the weak points of that DNA research.

Cyprus

  • Elephas (Palaeoloxodon) cypriotes
    Cyprus Dwarf Elephant

    The Cyprus Dwarf Elephant is an extinct species of elephant related to the living Asian Elephant....
     Bate, 1903
The Cyprus dwarf elephant survived at least until 11,000 BP
Before Present

Before Present years are a time scale used in archaeology, geology, and other science disciplines to specify when events in the past occurred. Because the "present" time changes, standard practice is to use 1950 Common_Era as the arbitrary origin of the age scale....
. Its estimated body weight was only 200 kg, only 2% of its 10,000 kg ancestor. Molars of this dwarf are reduced to approximately 40% the size of mainland straight-tusked elephant
Straight-tusked Elephant

The Straight-tusked Elephant is an extinct species of elephant closely related to the living Asian Elephant. It inhabited Europe during the Middle and Late Pleistocene ....
s.

Remains of the species were first discovered and recorded by Dorothea Bate
Dorothea Bate

Dorothea Minola Alice Bate Geological Society of London , also known as Dorothy Bate, was a United Kingdom palaeontologist, a pioneer of archaeozoology....
 in a cave in the Kyrenia
Kyrenia

Kyrenia is a town on the northern coast of Cyprus, noted for its historic harbour and castle. Internationally recognized as part of the Republic of Cyprus, Kyrenia has been under Turkish control since the Turkish invasion of Cyprus....
 hills of Cyprus
Cyprus

Cyprus , officially the Republic of Cyprus , is an island country situated in the eastern Mediterranean Sea, east of Greece, west of Lebanon, Syria, and Israel, south of Turkey and north of Egypt....
 in 1902 and reported in 1903.

Cyclades Islands

Remains of paleoloxodontine elephants have been reported from the islands of Delos
Delos

The island of Delos , isolated in the centre of the roughly circular ring of islands called the Cyclades, near Mykonos, is one of the most important mythological, historical and archaeological sites in Greece....
, Naxos, Kythnos
Kythnos

Kythnos or Kithnos is a Greek island and Communities and Municipalities of Greece in the Western Cyclades between Kea and Serifos. It is from the harbor of Piraeus....
, Serifos
Serifos

Seriphos or Serifos is a Greece island Communities and Municipalities of Greece in the Aegean Sea, located in the western Cyclades, south of Kythnos and northwest of Sifnos....
 and Milos
Milos

Milos , formerly known as ?????Melos, and before the Athens massacre and recolonization in 416 BC as ????? – Malos, is a volcanic Greece island in the Sea of Crete, just south of the Aegean Sea....
. The Delos elephant is of similar size to a small Elephas antiquus, while the Naxos elephant is of similar size to Elephas melitensis. The remains from Kythnos, Serifos and Milos have not been described.

Dodecanese Islands

On the island of Rhodes
Rhodes

Rhodes is a Greece List of islands of Greece approximately southwest of Turkey in eastern Aegean Sea. It is the largest of the Dodecanese islands in terms of both land area and population, with a population of 117,007 of which 53,709 resided in the Rhodes capital city of the island....
, bones of an endemic dwarf elephant have been discovered. This elephant was similar in size to Elephas mnaidriensis.

Two groups of remains of dwarf elephants have been found on the island of Tilos
Tilos

T?los is a small Greece island and Communities and Municipalities of Greece located in the Aegean Sea. It is part of the Dodecanese group of islands, and lies midway between Kos and Rhodes....
. They are similar in size to Elephas mnaidriensis and the smaller Elephas falconeri, but the two groups indicate sexual dimorphism. The remains had originally been designated to Palaeoloxodon antiquus falconeri (Busk, 1867). However, this name refers to the dwarf elephants from the island of Malta. As a result, since no migration route between the two islands can be proved, this name should not be used when referring to the elephant remnants from Tilos, although some scientists have accepted the temporal use of this name until further material can be examined.

The Tilos dwarf elephant is the first dwarf elephant whose DNA sequence has been studied. The results of this research are consistent with previous morphological reports, according to which Palaeoloxodon is more closely related to Elephas than to Loxodonta or Mammuthus.

The Tilos dwarf elephant was the latest paleoloxodontine to survive in Europe
Europe

Europe is, conventionally, one of the world's seven continents. Comprising the westernmost peninsula of Eurasia, Europe is generally divided from Asia to its east by the water divide of the Ural Mountains, the Ural , the Caspian Sea, and by the Caucasus Mountains to the southeast....
. They became extinct just less than 4000 years BP
Before Present

Before Present years are a time scale used in archaeology, geology, and other science disciplines to specify when events in the past occurred. Because the "present" time changes, standard practice is to use 1950 Common_Era as the arbitrary origin of the age scale....
, so this elephant survived well into the Holocene
Holocene

The Holocene is a geological Epoch which began approximately 11,700 years ago . According to traditional geological thinking, the Holocene continues to the present....
.

Channel Islands of California

The Columbian mammoth
Mammoth

A mammoth is any species of the extinct genus Mammuthus. These proboscideans are members of the Elephantidae and close relatives of modern elephants....
 (Mammuthus columbii) produced a separate, isolated population at the end of the Pleistocene. One of these isolated groups was formed on the Channel Islands of California
Channel Islands of California

The Channel Islands of California are a chain of eight islands located in the Pacific Ocean off the coast of Southern California along the Santa Barbara Channel in the United States of America....
, most likely about 40,000 years ago (although the time of isolation is not fully known). Selective forces on the Channel Islands resulted in smaller animals, forming a new species, the Pygmy Mammoth
Pygmy Mammoth

The 'Pygmy' or 'Channel Islands Mammoth' is an extinct species of dwarf elephant descended from the Columbian mammoth . A case of island or insular dwarfism, M....
 Mammuthus exilis. Channel Islands mammoths ranged from 150-190 cm in shoulder height.

Wrangel Island

During the last ice age, woolly mammoth
Woolly mammoth

The woolly mammoth , also called the tundra mammoth, is an extinct species of mammoth. This animal is known from bones and frozen carcasses from northern North America and northern Eurasia with the best preserved carcasses in Siberia....
s (Mammuthus primigenius) lived on Wrangel Island
Wrangel Island

Wrangel Island is an island in the Arctic Ocean, between the Chukchi Sea and East Siberian Sea. Wrangel Island lies astride the 180th meridian meridian ....
 in the Arctic Ocean
Arctic Ocean

The Arctic Ocean, located in the Northern Hemisphere and mostly in the Arctic North Pole region, is the smallest and shallowest of the world's five major oceanic divisions....
. It has been shown that mammoths survived on Wrangel Island until 1700 B.C.E., the most recent survival of any known mammoth population. They also survived on Saint Paul Island in the Bering Sea
Bering Sea

The Bering Sea is a body of water in the Pacific Ocean that comprises a deep water basin, which then rises through a narrow slope into the shallower water above the continental shelf....
 until 6000 B.C.E. Wrangel Island is thought to have become separated from the mainland by 12,000 years BP
Before Present

Before Present years are a time scale used in archaeology, geology, and other science disciplines to specify when events in the past occurred. Because the "present" time changes, standard practice is to use 1950 Common_Era as the arbitrary origin of the age scale....
. Survival of a mammoth population may be explained by local geographic, topographic and climatic features, which entailed preservation of communities of steppe plants, as well as a degree of isolation sufficient to delay colonization by humans. St. Paul Island shares this characteristic of geographic isolation, implying that human hunting played a role in the disappearance of the woolly mammoth. Wrangel Island mammoths ranged from 180-230 cm in shoulder height and were for a time considered "dwarf mammoths". However this classification has been re-evaluated and since the Second International Mammoth Conference in 1999, these mammoths are no longer considered to be true "dwarf mammoths".

Indonesia

On Sulawesi and Flores evidence of a succession of distinct endemic island faunas has been found, including dwarfed elephants, dating until the Middle Pleistocene
Pleistocene

The Pleistocene is the epoch from 1.8 million to 10,000 years Before Present covering the world's recent period of repeated glaciations. The name pleistocene is derived from the Greek and ....
. Around the early Middle Pleistocene these dwarfed elephants were replaced by new immigrants of larger to intermediate sizes.

Flores

The present understanding of the succession of Stegodon
Stegodon

Stegodon is a genus of the extinct subfamily Stegodontinae of the Order Proboscidea. Stegodonts lived in large parts of Asia during the Pliocene and Pleistocene epoch ....
 species on Flores
Flores

Flores is one of the Lesser Sunda Islands, an island arc with an estimated area of 14,300 km? extending east from the Java island of Indonesia....
 is that endemic dwarfs, represented by the Early Pleistocene species Stegodon sondaarii, became extinct around 840,000 years ago. These dwarf forms were then replaced by the medium to large-sized Stegodon florensis, a species closely related to the Stegodon trigonocephalus group found both in Java and in the islands of biogeographical Wallacea
Wallacea

Wallacea is a biogeography designation for a group of Indonesian islands separated by deep water straits from the Asian and Australia continental shelf....
, separated by deep water from the Asia
Asia

Asia is the world's largest and most populous continent. It covers 8.6% of the Earth's total surface area and, with over 4 billion people, it contains more than 60% of the world's current human population....
n and Australia
Australia

Australia, officially the Commonwealth of Australia, is a country in the southern hemisphere comprising the Australia of the world's smallest continent, the major island of Tasmania, and numerous list of islands of Australia in the Indian Ocean and Pacific Oceans....
n continental shelves
Continental shelf

The continental shelf is the extended perimeter of each continent and associated coastal plain, and was part of the continent during the glacial periods, but is undersea during Ice age such as the current epoch by relatively shallow seas and Bay....
.

Sulawesi

The dwarfed Stegodon sompoensis lived during the Pleistocene on the island of Sulawesi
Sulawesi

Sulawesi is one of the four larger Sunda Islands of Indonesia and is situated between Borneo and the Maluku Islands....
. They had a shoulder height of only 1.5m.

See also

  • Pygmy Elephant
    Pygmy Elephant

    Pygmy Elephants are cryptids, reported to be living in both Africa and Asia. The African Pygmy Elephant, described as Loxodonta pumilio, is currently considered to be a tiny morph of the African Forest Elephants ; see Debruyne et al. ....