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The End!
By:Nasra Abdi
Today, there are two main types of elephants: the Asian elephant and the African elephant. The Asian elephant is smaller than the african elephant and doesn't have tusks unlike the African elephant which has a set of short tusks and is the largest land animal in the world. A good way to identify which type
of elephant it is is to look at
the ears, if they are shaped
like Africa, it is an African
elephant opposed to the Asian
elephant which has smaller
ears.
About sixty million years ago, an elephant-like animal walked the Earth. It had no trunk and was about two feet big with short legs. It is the smallest and oldest ancestor known of the elephant family.
The species itself was recently discovered when
a fossil of its scull was found in Morocco by
Emmanuel Gherbrant, a french paleontologist
for the Museum of Natural History in Paris.
Also about one million years ago lived the Stegodon. It was bigger than all of its other ancestors at four meters tall and eight meters long with an additional three feet for their tusks which
curved upwards at the bottom. It
liver during the late Pliocene
and Pleistocene epochs along side
the Mastadons.
After the Paleomastadon came the
Gomphotherium in the Early Miocene
and Early Pliocene Epoch (15-5 million
years ago). The Gomphotherium looked
even more like our present day elephant
than the paleomastadon did. It was
slightly bigger and had a longer trunk (but still not what we have today.) The gomphotherium also had four tusks. Two on the bottom curved up like a shovel and two on the top that were straight.
The anancus lived in the jungles of Eurasia almost three million years ago during the Late Miocene to Early Pleistocene epoch. It was a little smaller, 1-2 tons and had long and straight tusks on the top jaw. Like all of its ancestors, it was an herbivore. Another
characteristic was the short
legs. It resembled the mo-
dern day elephant more
than any of its ancestors.
This is a cladogram of the the evolution of the elephant. It shows the modern elephants all the way too Paleomastodon.
This diagram shows how our present-day form of African Elephants Asian Elephants and derived from similar animals over the course of millions of years. The overall shape is kept the same but the size changes and more features are added to protect the elephant from organisms or conditions that may threaten it.
You could find African Elephants in savannahs or forests.
You can find Asian Elephants in large, grassy areas
Typical Environment/ Location for the elephant
Elephants are able to survive in a variety of different locations because of the huge variety of food sources that they consume. Many people assume that elephants that are in the wild only live in the grasslands. While that is one of their main habitats, they can also be found in the desert of the Savannah, forest areas, where there are swamps, and everything in between. The two species of elephants are the African elephant (Loxodonta africana) of sub-Saharan Africa, and the Asian elephant (Elephas maximus) of South and Southeast Asia.
Asian Elephant
African Elephant
Characteristics of the Elephant
The African elephant is the largest living land mammal, one of the most impressive animals on earth. Of all its specialized features, the muscular trunk is the most important it serves as a nose, a hand, an extra foot, a signaling device and a tool for gathering food, getting word water, dusting, digging and a variety of other functions. Not only does the long trunk help the elephant to reach as high as 23 feet, but it can also perform movements as delicate as picking berries or caressing a companion. It is capable, too, of powerful twisting and coiling movements used for tearing down trees or fighting. The trunk of the African elephant has two finger-like structures at its tip, as opposed to just one on the Asian elephant (Elephas maximus).
This diagram shows how elephants evolved during the Cenozoic Era.
Evidence of African Elephant evolution comes from fossilized bones and remains trapped in ice. Scientist have also studied tiny pieces of evidence from DNA. Recently, they studied a 200 mg bone from a mammoth
Adaptations
Elephants have adapted to have trunks to make loud noises to scare predators away. Trunks are very flexible to let elephants reach high into trees to get food. Elephants also use their trunk to suck up and spray water on their skin (helps them cool off). Their trunks can give calls of warning to their herd about potential threats. Trunks grew longer as the species evolved because their heads are far from the ground.
Fun facts!
-Elephants are social creatures. They sometimes “hug” by wrapping their trunks together in displays of greeting and affection.
- Elephants cry, play, have incredible memories, and laugh.
-Elephants use their feet to listen, they can pick up sub-sonic rumblings made by other elephants, through vibrations in the ground. Elephants are observed listening by putting trunks on the ground and carefully positioning their feet.
- Tusks are an elephant’s incisor teeth. They are used for defense, digging for water, and lifting things.
-•Elephants have poor eyesight but an amazing sense of smell.
In the evolution of the elephant, we found that there is one main piece of evidence towards evolution: their trunks. the ancestors of elephants did not have trunks but know the trunk is the most
Evolution tree
Time Tree . org
Because The elephant inst related to homo sapiens i couldn't find any information on possible or common ancestors between humans. i only found the time of the divergence between the two.
Elephant
Elephas maximus
Versus
homo sapien
Homo sapiens
98.7 Million Years Ago
Mean: 98.7 Mya
Median: 101.3 Mya
Expert Result: 104.7 Mya
distinctive characteristic in an elephant. Sixty million years ago, trunks weren't needed. Most elephant back then dug up roots from the ground. Now, elephants need their trunks to pick up food such as fallen branches.
Tusks help elephants scare predators away. Elephants' long tusks are sharp and curved to allow them to dig up roots to eat. They also use tusks to strip bark and soft wood off trees, which they eat. Tusks help them survive through dry spells, as they use them to dig in the ground and uncover salts and other minerals vital to their diets. Elephants evolved to go from 4 tusks to 2.
Elephants' massive size makes them almost invulnerable to attacks from wild animals.
They flap their large ears to cool blood n their capillaries and distribute cooler blood through their bodies. This process can lower their body temperature by more than 10 degrees Fahrenheit.
Now
40 Mil BC
5 Mil BC
20 Mil BC
1 Mil BC
8,000 BC
60 Mil BC
Then, thirty-eight million years ago, the paleomastadon walked the earth. They were herbivores and had long, flat skulls. Every paleomastadon also had upper and lower tusks. The paleomastadon was relativity closer to the
The word primelephas, in greek, actually means the first elephant. The primelephas lived about five million years ago in the woodlands of Africa. IT was an herbivore and looked a lot like the
elephant we have today. It had tusks in its
upper and lower jaws just like its ancestors.
The primelephas was the last common
ancestor of both the asian and african
elephants.
The mammoth or "Woolly" Mammoth, came about ten thousand years ago. It was known as "woolly" because unlike most other elephant ancestors, it had a layer of fur (and fat as well). The mammoth
was large but its tusks were definitely the
main factor of its size. At thirteen feet long,
some tusks curved back towards the mammoth
as if wanting to touch itself. These cause of
extinction of the woolly mammoth was the ice
age. Some mammoths can still be found intact
in ice.
modern day elephant in size. It weighed two tons and was about 12 feet long. The paleomastadon wasn't related to the mammoth or mastodon.
One million years ago, the mammut, or mastadon, walked the earth. Like the mammoth, the mastdon had a layer of shaggy hair in contrast to most of its other relatives. The masto-
don itself started in Africa so
it might bear more of a re-
semblance to the african
elephant. Mastodons, unlike
mammoths were solitary
animals, roaming in small, fam-
ily groups.
As you can see in the Primelephas, most ancestors of elephants had tusks. They used their tusks to dig up root or food from underground. In some cases, the bottom set of tusks were curved i a shovel form to make it easier to dig in the ground. Today, people hunt elephants and cut of their tusks for ivory.