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The End!

The Evolution of the Elephant

By:Nasra Abdi

Asian and African Elephants

Anancus

Stegodon

Gomphotherium

Eritherium Azzouzorum

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

Evidence of Evolution

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

Mammuthus (Mammoth)

Primelephas

Paleomastadon

Mammut (Mastodon)

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.

Why Tusks?

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.

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