Palaeoloxodon

Palaeoloxodon Temporal range: Pleistocene PreЄ Є O S D C P T J K Pg N ↓
Fossil skull of a straight-tusked elephant (P. antiquus)
Scientific classification
Kingdom:	Animalia
Phylum:	Chordata
Clade:	Synapsida
Class:	Mammalia
Order:	Proboscidea
Family:	Elephantidae
Subtribe:	†Palaeoloxodontina
Genus:	†Palaeoloxodon Matsumoto, 1924
Species
P. antiquus P. chaniensis P. cypriotes P. falconeri P. melitensis P. mnaidriensis P. namadicus P. naumanni P. recki P. tokunagai

Palaeoloxodon is an extinct genus that contains the various species of straight-tusked elephant. Its species' remains have been found in Bilzingsleben, Germany; Cyprus; Japan; Sicily; Malta; and in England during the excavation of the second Channel Tunnel. The English discovery, in 2006 in northwest Kent, dated c. 400,000 ybp, was of a single adult; associated with it were Palaeolithic stone butchering tools of the type used by Homo heidelbergensis. One species, Palaeoloxodon namadicus, was the largest known land mammal of all time.

Taxonomy

Palaeoloxodon was previously thought to be a subgenus of Elephas, but this was abandoned by 2007. It is more closely related to the Asian Elephant than the Asian is to the two species of African elephants in genus Loxodonta. Palaeoloxodon is known informally as the "straight-tusked elephant" because of the straight tusks of Palaeoloxodon antiquus.

Some notable species are:

• P. antiquus (Europe, Middle east, Asia), was a bit larger than the modern African elephant
• P. chaniensis (Crete), dwarf elephant
• P. cypriotes (Cyprus), dwarf elephant
• P. falconeri (Sicily and Malta), dwarf elephant
• P. mnaidriensis (Sicily), dwarf elephant
• P. namadicus (Asia)
• P. naumanni (Southern Japan), dwarf elephant and possible subspecies of E. namadicus
• P. recki (east Africa), the oldest (4.0 - 0.6 million years ago) and one of the largest species

Extinction

See also: Elephants in ancient China

The last mainland European Palaeoloxodon faced extinction 30,000 years ago. The Japanese species possibly survived for a little longer afterwards. Among the last straight-tusked elephants were the Mediterranean dwarf species, which died out 3,000 years ago - possibly at the hands of human hunters and introduced predators.

It has been claimed that a Palaeoloxodon population of undetermined species survived in northern China until 3,000 years ago. Li Ji and colleagues from the Institute of Geographic Sciences and Natural Resources Research, Beijing argued that teeth previously believed to belong to Asian Elephants were actually those of Palaeoloxodon. It is unknown whether these belong to a new, distinctive species or actual descendants of P. namadicus. They also argued that ritual bronze vessels depicting trunks with two "fingers" must be Palaeoloxodon (which are only known from bones; we do not know about their trunks) because Asian elephants only have one. Fossil elephant experts Victoria Herridge and Adrian Lister disagree with the assignment, stating that the claimed diagnostic dental features are actually contrast artifacts created due to the low resolution of the figures in the scientific paper, and which are not evident in better quality photographs. Given that we do not know what Palaeoloxodon trunks looked like, and the bronze depictions of animals shown in the paper are highly stylized, the argument based on bronze vessels is also unreliable. Thus these elephants are more likely Asian elephants, as originally believed.