Evolutionary Story of the Elephant

Elephant

4444 BCE

According to the research, modern elephants and woolly mammoths share a common ancestor that split into two species around 6 million years ago. African elephants were the first to split off at the time. They use their big ears to cool the blood in their capillaries and spread it across their bodies. Their blood temperature will drop by more than 10 degrees Fahrenheit as a result of this operation.

Elephant

4444 BCE

They are most commonly found in savannas, grasslands, and forests, but they also live in deserts, swamps, and highlands in Africa and Asia's tropical and subtropical regions.

Primelephas

3333 BCE

The Primelephas had two pronounced tusks in the upper jaw, which became stronger and increased in length over time. The small, lower tusks gradually shortened over time and eventually disappeared. They particularly would be found in Wooded savannas of East Africa during the Miocene epoch.

Primelephas - 5 million yrs ago

3333 BCE

The Primelephas was the most recent common ancestor of modern African and Eurasian elephants, as well as the now-extinct woolly mammoth. They also gave rise to other elephant species, such as modern Asian and African elephants, as well as the mammoth.

Mammoth

2222 BCE

The snowy environment was its long hair which insulated its body and kept it warm, its long tusks which are used to get food through the snow and ice, and also may have been used as protection, its small ears which minimized heat loss, and its relatively large size (which also minimized heat loss). The woolly mammoth’s habitat is much colder climates to small genetic mutations that may have changed the way oxygen was delivered by its blood that could have kept them warmer.

Mammoth - 5.3 million yrs ago

2222 BCE

Research by a team from the University of Manitoba in Winnipeg, Canada, found that the ancestors of both the mammoth and Asian elephant originated in Africa 6.7 million to 7 million years ago. They seemed to have stayed there for about 4 million years before moving up into Southern Europe.

Gomphotherium

1111 BCE

The jaws of gomphotheres are thought to have been similar to those of modern elephants, in that they were too small to accommodate their massive molar teeth. As a result, gomphotheres developed a “conveyor-belt” system of tooth replacement, in which small teeth that formed early in life were replaced from the rear by larger teeth. Gomphotheres inhabited grasslands, forests, and marshes, with some species evolving highly specialized teeth for grazing and browsing in each environment.

Gomphotherium - 6 million yrs ago

1011 BCE

The earliest uncontested gomphothere fossils date to the Miocene Epoch, but some paleontologists argue that fossils from Eritrea and Ethiopia discovered in the early 21st century push the origin of the group back to the late Oligocene Epoch. Also, it is thought that gomphotheres may have diverged from the evolutionary lineage of mammoths (Mammuthus) and modern elephants sometime after the emergence of the mastodon (Mastodon, or Mammut).