Elephants

A mammalian success story

At the end of the Eocene, about 40 million years ago, dozens of species of proboscideans evolved on the African continent. In the Miocene, about 25 million years ago, the land bridge between Africa and Eurasia formed, and the proboscideans were able to spread across the entire planet.

In the Pliocene, about 5 million years ago, lived the largest of all elephant species that ever existed: with a height of 4 metres, Deinotherium, the so-called tusked elephant, was also the largest animal of its time. It had a similar skeletal structure to today's elephants, but its neck was much longer. And the mighty tusks protruded from its lower jaw. Today's elephants carry their tusks in their upper jaws. 

Deinotherium, as a member of the Deinotheria family, was not a direct ancestor of elephants. While smaller Deinotheria species became extinct about 10 million years ago, larger species survived in Europe until the late Pliocene, about 2 million years ago. It is assumed that the cooling of the climate at the transition from the Pliocene to the Pleistocene, about 1.8 million years ago, was responsible for the extinction of Deinotherium. The spread of dry steppes may have deprived the large proboscideans of their food source. Today, only two of the formerly dozens of proboscidean species are still widespread: the African and Asian elephants.