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Elephant fossils tell 27-million-year-old tale

Posted on: Wednesday, 7 January 2004, 06:00 CST

Elephants may never forget, but they certainly have a lot to remember. Ethiopian fossils suggest that the animals' ancestors were alive and well 27 million years ago.

The newly uncovered fossils, reported this month in Nature, shed light on a time when the African and Arabian land masses, and their ancient mammals, were isolated from Europe and Asia by water.

The finds reveal the picture of animal migration in the millennia that preceded the formation of a land bridge between Asia and Africa about 24 million years ago.

Surprisingly varied examples of five species of elephant ancestors, alongside now-extinct large mammals, are reported by a paleontology team led by John Kappleman of the University of Texas in Austin.

Among the intriguing finds: "Arsinoitherium," a double-horned relative that resembled a rhino, and "Deinothere," an elephant species marked by downward-curving tusks.

Fossils show "Gomphotherium," the forebear of today's elephant, was smaller then. It's size was "about that of a medium-sized Texas longhorn" in the words of a University of Texas news release.

"When Eurasian immigrants entered Afro-Arabia, a pattern of winners and losers emerged," the study's authors write.

Elephants were winners, eventually spreading across Asia and into North America via the Bering Strait, where perhaps their most famous ancient relative, the mammoth, died out only in the last 12,000 years.

Rhinos and other herbivores also won, spreading from Asia into Africa.

The fossils demonstrate that from 55 million to 24 million years ago much of the diversity of African mammals occurred in isolation, says French paleontologist Jean-Jacques Jaeger of the Institut des Sciences de l'Evolution in Montpelier, who wrote a commentary accompanying the report.

After the age of the dinosaurs ended about 65 million years ago, a great variety of elephant species evolved to fill various niches in Africa's landscape, he says, allowing them to adapt when Africa joined other continents.

The researchers plan to continue excavations next summer. "Many more surprising discoveries are to be expected," Jaeger says.

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