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Tag Archives: elephants
Neanderthals hunted and butchered giant elephants
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Some 125,000 years ago, enormous elephants that weighed as much as eight cars each roamed in what’s now northern Europe.
Scientifically known as Palaeoloxodon antiquus, the towering animals were the largest land mammals of the Pleistocene, standing more than 13 feet (4 meters) high. Despite this imposing size, the now-extinct straight-tusked elephants were routinely hunted and systematically butchered for their meat by Neanderthals, according to a new study of the remains of 70 of the animals found at a site in central Germany known as Neumark-Nord, near the city of Halle.
The discovery is shaking up what we know about how the extinct hominins, who existed for more than 300,000 years before disappearing about 40,000 years ago, organized their lives. Neanderthals were extremely skilled hunters, knew how to preserve meat and lived a more settled existence in groups that were larger than many scholars had envisaged, the research has suggested.
A distinct pattern of repetitive cut marks on the surface of the well-preserved bones — the same position on different animals and on the left and right skeletal parts of an individual animal — revealed that the giant elephants were dismembered for their meat, fat and brains after death, following a more or less standard procedure over a period of about 2,000 years. Given a single adult male animal weighed 13 metric tons (twice as much as an African elephant), the butchering process likely involved a large number of people and took days to complete.
Stone tools have been found in northern Europe with other straight-tusked elephant remains that had some cut marks. However, scientists have never had clarity on whether early humans actively hunted elephants or scavenged meat from those that died of natural causes. The sheer number of elephant bones with the systematic pattern of cut marks put this debate to rest, said the authors of the study published Wednesday in the journal Science Advances.
The Neanderthals likely used thrusting and throwing spears, which have been found at another site in Germany, to target male elephants because of their larger size and solitary behavior, said study coauthor Wil Roebroeks, a professor of Paleolithic archaeology at Leiden University in Germany. The demographics of the site skewed toward older and male elephants than would be expected had the animals died naturally, according to the study.
“It’s a matter of immobilizing these animals or driving them into muddy shores so that their weight works against them,” he said. “If you can immobilize one with a few people and corner them into an area where they get stuck. It’s a matter of finishing them off.”
What was most startling about the discovery was not that Neanderthals were capable of hunting such large animals but that they knew what to do with the meat, said Britt M. Starkovich, a researcher at the Senckenberg Centre for Human Evolution and Palaeoenvironment at the University of Tübingen in Germany, in commentary published alongside the study.
“The yield is mindboggling: more than 2,500 daily portions of 4,000 calories per portion. A group of 25 foragers could thus eat a straight-tusked elephant for 3 months, 100 foragers could eat for a month, and 350 people could eat for a week,” wrote Starkovich, who was not involved in the research.
“Neanderthals knew what they were doing. They knew which kinds of individuals to hunt, where to find them, and how to execute the attack. Critically, they knew what to expect with a massive butchery effort and an even larger meat return.”
The Neanderthals living there likely knew how to preserve and store meat, perhaps through the use of fire and smoke, Roebroeks said. It’s also possible that such a meat bonanza was an opportunity for temporary gatherings of people from a larger social network, said study coauthor Sabine Gaudzinski-Windheuser, a professor of prehistoric and protohistoric archaeology at the Johannes Gutenberg-University in Mainz, Germany.
She explained the occasion could perhaps have served as a marriage market. An October 2022 study based on ancient DNA from a small group of Neanderthals living in what’s now Siberia suggested that women married outside their own community, noted Gaudzinski-Windheuser, who is also director of the Monrepos Archaeological Research Centre and Museum of Human Behavioural Evolution in Neuwied.
“We don’t see that in the archaeological record but I think the real benefit of this study is that now everything’s on the table,” she said.
Scientists had long thought that Neanderthals were highly mobile and lived in small groups of 20 or less. However, this latest finding suggested that they may have lived in much bigger groups and been more sedentary at this particular place and time, when food was plentiful and the climate benign. The climate at the time — before the ice sheets advanced at the start of the last ice age around 100,000 to 25,000 years ago — would have been similar to today’s conditions.
Killing a tusked elephant would not have been an everyday event, the study found, with approximately one animal killed every five to six years at this location based on the number found. It’s possible, however, that more elephant remains were destroyed as the site is part of a open cast mine, according to the researchers. Other finds at the site suggested Neanderthals hunted a wide array of animals across a lake landscape populated by wild horses, fallow deer and red deer.
More broadly, the study underscores the fact that Neanderthals weren’t brutish cave dwellers so often depicted in popular culture. In fact, the opposite is true: They were skilled hunters, understood how to process and preserve food, and thrived in a variety of different ecosystems and climates. Neanderthals also made sophisticated tools, yarn and art, and they buried their dead with care.
“To the more recognizably human traits that we know Neanderthals had — taking care of the sick, burying their dead, and occasional symbolic representation — we now also need to consider that they had preservation technologies to store food and were occasionally semi sedentary or that they sometimes operated in groups larger than we ever imagined,” Starkovich said.
Elephant rips handler in half in Thailand after working in heat: report
Breaking News
Can you spot the elephant in this optical illusion?
This optical illusion featuring an elephant could reveal just how good your eyesight really is.
The hidden image of the animal can reportedly only be spotted by one percent of people – but fear not as there’s a helpful trick to help you.
The mind-boggling image was shared by TikTok star Hectic Nick as he challenged viewers to solve the illusion.
Posting the illusion he said: “Only one percent of people can find the hidden elephant in this image.
“It’s not easy, but try flipping your phone over and you might be able to find it.
“Send this to a friend and see what they do.”
The image left viewers in the comments baffled as they struggled to find the animal in the inverted image.
But finally, the penny dropped that the elephant was lurking in the foreground with the two large trees acting as its legs and the smaller tree as its trunk.
One frustrated user wrote: “I took ten hours to find this.”
Another penned: “It’s the trees.”
While a third brazen person added: “Saw it without having to flip. I guess I’m in the one percent.”
Meanwhile, viewers were challenged to find the crown in a busy brainteaser.
It comes ahead of the highly anticipated Jubilee celebrations starting next week.
Elsewhere, an optical illusion determines if you’re curious and brave, or if you have a tendency to ignore your own emotions.
Plus, an image of a heavily pregnant personal trainer has gone viral – but can you work out why?
This story originally appeared on The Sun and has been reproduced here with permission.
Scientists unravel the mystery of how elephants mourn their dead thanks to YouTube, report says
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A team of scientists used YouTube videos to observe how elephants mourn their dead, according to a new paper.
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They found 39 videos capturing 24 cases of elephants mourning lost members of their herd, the study said.
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The scientists were surprised to see female elephants carrying dead calves for days or weeks at a time.
Biologist Sanjeeta Sharma Pokharel had only observed one example of Asian elephants mourning their dead in the wild after four years of fieldwork in India, according to Science.org — the American Association for the Advancement of Science’s journal.
Some of her colleagues, who had spent decades observing wild elephants, only witnessed the creatures displaying grief a “handful of times,” the journal said.
Struggling to capture first-hand footage for their research, a team of scientists from the Indian Institute of Science’s Centre for Ecological Sciences tried something new; they turned to YouTube.
By searching terms like “Asian elephant death” and “elephant response to death,” Science.org said the team was able to find a wealth of new data.
They found 39 videos capturing 24 cases of elephants mourning their dead, per a paper published Wednesday in the journal Royal Society Open Science.
In the videos, the team of researchers observed mourning behaviors in the elephants.
According to The New York Times, they saw elephants sniffing and touching carcasses with their trunks, shaking the dead with their legs, and kicking dying calves in an apparent attempt to revive them.
The elephants also trumpeted and roared in response to the deaths, The New York Times reported, and held a vigil for lost members of their herd by staying near the bodies and chasing away curious humans.
In one case, a calf snuggled with its dying mother, and, in another example, adult elephants used their trunks to gently pat their friends on the head, per Science.org.
Most surprising, Pokharel told the newspaper, was observing adult female elephants carrying the bodies of dead calves. It was observed in five cases, the New York Times reported.
The female elephants, presumably mothers, could be seen carrying the babies through forests for days, possibly weeks, at a time, according to Science.org.
The work is part of a growing field called comparative thanatology — the scientific study of death and dying.
The method of crowdsourcing videos, per science, is sometimes called iEcology. It involves making use of online resources to generate ecological insights.
The research into how elephants mourn will be helpful, Pokharel told The New York Times, because it cold “give us insight about their highly complex cognitive abilities.”
Read the original article on Business Insider
Archaeologists unearth skeletons of five prehistoric elephants after finding Neanderthal axe
Archaeologists have unearthed the skeletons of five prehistoric mammoths at a site ‘where cave-dwellers dined 215,000 years ago’ after finding a Neanderthal axe in a Cotswolds field.
Experts discovered the remains of five of the animals – two adults, two juveniles and an infant – at a quarry near Swindon.
Digging at the site began after two keen fossil hunters, Sally and Neville Hollingworth, spotted a Neanderthal hand axe at the site.
Experts from DigVentures then went on to find remains belonging to a species of Steppe mammoth, an ancestor of the Woolly mammoth.
Other discoveries at the site included delicate beetle wings and fragile freshwater snail shells as well as stone tools from the Neanderthal age.
The site will feature in Attenborough And The Mammoth Graveyard on BBC1 on December 30.
The site will feature in Attenborough And The Mammoth Graveyard (above) on BBC1 on December 30
Experts discovered the remains of five of the animals – two adults, two juveniles and an infant – at a quarry near Swindon. Pictured: Conservation on a mammoth tusk
The illustration represents a reconstruction of the steppe mammoths that preceded the woolly mammoth, based on the genetic knowledge we now have from the Adycha mammoth
Sir David Attenborough will join Professor Ben Garrod and archaeologists from DigVentures to learn why the mammoths were there and how they died.
The discovery of the Neanderthal tools could mean the site was a ‘massive buffet’, according to experts.
Prof Garrod, of the University of East Anglia, said: ‘This is gold dust. It could be that Neanderthals were camping there, maybe they caused the deaths of these animals, chasing them into the mud and enjoying a massive buffet.’
‘Maybe they found them there already and got a free meal,’ he told the Telegraph.
‘If the lab shows the cut-marks are human-made, our site will be one of the oldest scientifically excavated sites with Neanderthals butchering mammoths in Britain.’
Steppe mammoths lived from approximately 1.8million years ago to about 200,000 years ago.
Lisa Westcott Wilkins, from DigVentures, said: ‘Finding mammoth bones is always extraordinary, but finding ones that are so old and well preserved, and in such close proximity to Neanderthal stone tools is exceptional.
‘Words can’t quite capture the thrill of seeing a mammoth tusk still in the ground, or the feeling of standing in the middle of a site that has the potential to change how we see our closest human relatives and the Ice Age megafauna they shared their world with.’
Digging at the site began after two keen fossil hunters, Sally and Neville Hollingworth, spotted a Neanderthal hand axe at the site
Experts from DigVentures then went on to find remains belonging to a species of Steppe mammoth, an ancestor of the Woolly mammoth
Other discoveries at the site included delicate beetle wings and fragile freshwater snail shells as well as stone tools from the Neanderthal age
Sir David Attenborough will join Professor Ben Garrod and archaeologists from DigVentures to learn why the mammoths were there and how they died
The discovery of the Neanderthal tools could mean the site was a ‘massive buffet’, according to experts
Ms Hollingworth, of Swindon, told the BBC: ‘We were originally hoping to find marine fossils, and finding something so significant instead has been a real thrill.
‘Even better than that is seeing it turn into a major archaeological excavation
‘We couldn’t be more pleased that something we’ve discovered will be learned from and enjoyed by so many people.’
Research is ongoing to understand why so many mammoths were found in one place, and whether they were hunted or scavenged by Neanderthals.
Steppe mammoths lived from approximately 1.8million years ago to about 200,000 years ago. Pictured: Mammoth bones from Hollingsworth and DigVentures collections combined
Research is ongoing to understand why so many mammoths were found in one place, and whether they were hunted or scavenged by Neanderthals. Pictured: A mammoth tooth
Duncan Wilson, chief Executive of Historic England, said: ‘This represents one of Britain’s most significant Ice Age discoveries in recent years.
‘The findings have enormous value for understanding the human occupation of Britain, and the delicate environmental evidence recovered will also help us understand it in the context of past climate change.’
DigVentures is a team of archaeologists which also organise archaeological digs that are open to members of the public to join.
How Did Elephants and Walruses Get Their Tusks? It’s a Long Story.
Elephants have them. Pigs have them. Narwhals and water deer have them. Tusks are among the most dramatic examples of mammal dentition: ever-growing, projecting teeth used for fighting, foraging, even flirting.
So why, across the broad sweep of geologic history, do such useful teeth only appear among mammals and no other surviving groups of animals? According to a study published Wednesday in the journal Proceedings of the Royal Society B, it takes two key adaptations to teeth to make a tusk — and the evolutionary pathway first appeared millions of years before the first true mammals.
Around 255 million years ago, a family of mammal relatives called dicynodonts — tusked, turtle-beaked herbivores ranging in stature from gopher-size burrowers to six-ton behemoths — wandered the forests of the supercontinent Pangea. A few lineages survived the devastating Permian extinction period, during which more than 90 percent of Earth’s species died out, before being replaced by herbivorous dinosaurs.
“They were really successful animals,” said Megan Whitney, a paleontologist at Harvard University and the lead author of the study. “They’re so abundant in South Africa that in some of these sites, you just get really sick of seeing them. You’ll look out over a field and there’ll just be skulls of these animals everywhere.”
To work out how these animals evolved their tusks, Dr. Whitney and her colleagues collected bone samples from 10 dicynodont species, among them the tiny, big-eyed Diictodon and the tank-like Lystrosaurus. They looked at how their canines attached to the jaw, whether they regularly regenerated lost teeth, like many reptiles do, and for indicators that their teeth grew continuously.
Many mammal families have evolved long, saber-toothed fangs or ever-growing incisors for gnawing. Several early dicynodonts also had a pair of long canine teeth poking from their beaks. But these teeth, like most animal teeth, are composed of a substance called dentine, capped by a hard, thin covering of enamel. Tusks have no enamel, Dr. Whitney said, and grow continuously even as the comparatively softer dentine gets worn away.
Examining the dicynodont skulls, the team found that a shift occurred midway through the group’s evolution: the appearance of soft tissue attachments supporting the teeth, akin to the ligaments present in modern mammals. And like modern mammals, dicynodonts didn’t continuously replace their teeth.
Both of these shifts laid the groundwork for the development of an ever-growing, well-supported tooth — a tusk. Afterward, Dr. Whitney said, late dicynodonts developed tusks in at least two different lineages, and possibly more.
This evolutionary pathway is reminiscent of another group of tusked animals: elephants. Early elephant relatives had enlarged canines that were covered with enamel, Dr. Whitney said. Later members of the family reduced the enamel to a thin band on one side of the tooth, like a rodent incisor, allowing the tooth to grow continuously. Finally, they ditched the enamel entirely.
“You’re providing the means for a tusk to evolve if you unlock the evolution of reduced tooth replacement and soft tissue attachments,” Dr. Whitney said. “Once you have a group that has both conditions, you can go a long time of animals playing with different tooth combinations, and you start to see these independent developments of tusks.”
The reason that tusks are currently limited to modern mammals, then, lies in a specific arrangement of teeth that mammals inherited from the broader family of synapsids, the group that includes mammal forerunners like dicynodonts.
Even with those prerequisites, Dr. Whitney said, an adaptation like tusks isn’t inevitable. But it is available, and multiple mammal groups — elephants, whales, deer, pigs and walruses — have found uses for them.
“Mammals are kind of stuck with our teeth, unlike something like a shark, which has a conveyor belt of terror,” Dr. Whitney said. “So an ever-growing tooth is pretty brilliant if you’re only replacing your tooth once.”
Poacher trampled to death by elephant in South African national park
A suspected poacher is believed to have been trampled to death by an elephant after the man’s mangled body was found in South Africa’s Kruger National Park, a park spokesman said on Saturday.
The body was discovered by national park rangers during an intelligence operation intended to prevent poachings in the park, Kruger spokesman Isaac Phaahla told AFP, according to CBS.
“Initial investigations suspect that the deceased was killed by an elephant and left behind by his accomplices,” Paahla said.
The suspected poacher was found with his cell phone still intact, which rangers provided to law enforcement in the hopes of identifying and locating his partners.
In April, a rhinoceros poacher was trampled to death in Kruger by a breeding herd of elephants he ran into after he was spotted by park rangers.
An alarming new study has discovered that as a result of generations of poaching, some African Elephants have evolved to be born without their iconic tusks.
“What I think this study shows is that it’s more than just numbers. The impacts that people have, we’re literally changing the anatomy of animals,” study co-author and Princeton University professor Robert Pringle told the Guardian.
Last week, the national park announced the arrest of four rhino poachers, indicating an increase in poaching this year compared to last year.
“There has been an increase of 29.41% in the number of poachers arrested (22) as compared to (17) for the same period in 2020,” officials said.
Archaic Hominin Made Elephant Bone Tools 400,000 Years Ago, Study Finds
Archaeologists examining artifacts collected from a site in Italy found that an archaic hominin species had made elephant bone tools, including pointed tools for carving meat and wedge-shaped tools for cracking open large femurs and other long bones, 400,000 years ago. This is hundreds of thousands of years before such a thing had been considered possible. These innovative toolmakers lived in the Middle Pleistocene epoch, at least 100,000 years before modern man first appeared in far-off Africa.
Fig 12 from the study showing unifaces and pointed tools made with elephant bones found at the Castel di Guido site, Rome, Italy. A-C: unifaces with a side scraper edge; D: pointed wedge (base is battered). E-F: pointed tools on bovid diaphysis fragments, catalogue numbers 326, 2807. G-H: pointed tools. ( Plos One )
A Total of 98 Flaked Elephant Bone Tools Were Found
This astonishing discovery was made by a team of researchers from Italy, France, South Africa, and the United States, headed by University of Colorado-Boulder archaeology professor Paola Villa. They studied elephant bone tools excavated between 1979 to 1991 from the Castel di Guido site near Rome, and in the process revealed fascinating details about the craftsmanship involved in making these bone tools .
Writing about their findings in the Plos One journal study the archaeologists note that the 98 verified elephant bone tools found at Castel di Guido represent “the highest number of flaked bone tools made by pre-modern hominids published so far.” Acknowledging the advanced techniques used to make these rare tools, the archaeologists credit the ancient toolmakers with completing “the first step in the process of increasing complexity of bone technology.”
In the Middle Pleistocene, there was a stream running through Castel di Guido. An extinct Eurasian straight-tusked elephant species used the stream as a source of fresh water, and archaic humans were drawn to the area as well and likely settled very nearby. Occasionally one of these 13-foot (four-meter) tall elephants would die of natural causes, and the local hominins would then scavenge the massive remains for hides, meat, and bones.
These elephant bones were strong and sturdy, which made them suitable for use as tools. They were often broken randomly into pieces and used as they were. But sometimes toolmakers would customize the bones by using rocks or other pieces of bone to break off flakes or chunks, carefully working the bone’s shape until it was just as they wanted.
Not all the bone tools found at the Castel de Guido site were made from elephant bones. Fig 14 from the study shows the polished tip of an aurochs (a species wild cattle) bone, compared with an ancient horse bone tool from Germany (bottom right). These tools are known as lissoirs, which ancient humans used to treat leather with. ( Plos One )
In this case, the tools were modified in ways that were unusual 400,000 years ago.
“We see other sites with bone tools at this time,” Professor Paola Villa, who is also the adjoint curator at the CU Boulder Museum of Natural History, explained in a University of Colorado-Boulder press release . “But there isn’t this variety of well-defined shapes.”
“At Castel di Guido, humans were breaking the long bones of the elephants in a standardized manner and producing standardized blanks to make bone tools,” Villa continued. “This kind of aptitude didn’t become common until much later.”
“Much later” in this instance means up to 100,000 years later!
“Until recently the generally accepted idea was that early bone technology was essentially immediate and expedient, based on single-stage operations, using available bone fragments of large to medium size animals,” Villa and her colleagues wrote in their Plos One article. “Only Upper Paleolithic bone tools would involve several stages of manufacture with clear evidence of primary flaking or breaking of bone to produce the kind of fragments required for different kinds of tools.”
The discovery of the work of the Castel di Guido toolmakers has shattered the previous timeline. It’s left archaeologists questioning everything they thought they new about the development of human toolmaking practices on the Eurasian continent. It seems that the process was not linear and that it progressed much faster in at least one small part of the world.
Did the Neanderthals Live at Castel di Guido? The lead author of the study, archaeology professor Paola Villa ( Colorado University Boulder) , believes the Neanderthals as the likely makers of these extremely old elephant bone tools. ( Gorodenkoff / Adobe Stock)
Did Neanderthals or Homo Erectus Live at Castel di Guido?
So far, archaeologists working at Castel di Guido have failed to find the fossilized remains of ancient humans. Such a discovery could have helped them to pin down the true identity of the ancient toolmakers.
Nevertheless, Paola Villa has a theory about who they might have been. She believes they were Neanderthals, the long-extinct cousin of modern humans who were in Eurasia during the Middle Pleistocene.
“About 400,000 years ago, you start to see the habitual use of fire, and it’s the beginning of the Neanderthal lineage,” Villa explained. “This is a very important period for Castel di Guido.”
It is hardly surprising that Villa would identify the Neanderthals as the likely toolmakers . She is considered one of the world’s top experts on the Neanderthals, and her contributions have helped reverse previous negative judgments about their intellectual capacities and their level of cultural and social development.
Another possible candidate for who made these bone tools would be Homo erectus . ( York / Adobe Stock)
Another possible toolmaking candidate would be Homo erectus . This ancient ancestor of Homo sapiens (modern man) first emerged more than two million years ago, and by 400,000 years ago they were living throughout Europe and Asia. They were the first hominin species to demonstrate impressive toolmaking skills, although they would have had to have been more advanced than believed to have produced the elephant bone tools found in Italy.
Whoever the manufacturers were, the tools they created were impressively diverse. The crafted objects found at Castel di Guido included tools with sharp points, which could have been used to cut meat. There were also bone wedges that could have been used to splinter large, long, and heavy elephant bones into smaller pieces.
One tool was especially sophisticated. Long and smooth at one end, this object was identified as a lissoir, which ancient humans used to treat leather. All previously discovered lissoirs have been dated to 300,000 ago or later, and of all the tools discovered at Castel di Guido this is the one that pushes the archaeological record back the furthest.
Interestingly, this particular tool was not made from an elephant bone. It was shaped from a wild cattle bone instead. The ancient toolmakers at Castel di Guido were obviously happy to use elephant bones whenever possible, but they didn’t rely on them exclusively as a source of raw material.
Professor Paola Villa lead author of the study doesn’t think the Castel di Guido hominins who made the elephant bone tools were unusually smart, compared to Neanderthals living in other areas . ( Leakey Foundation )
Innovation Determined by Circumstance
Paola Villa doesn’t think the Castel di Guido hominins were unusually smart, compared to Neanderthals living in other areas. She believes they used the resources that were available to them as best they could, and because they didn’t have access to large pieces of flint at their location they turned to elephant bones as an alternative. Elephant bones weren’t so easy to find elsewhere, so other hominin groups wouldn’t have had the opportunity to explore the tool manufacturing possibilities so thoroughly.
“At other sites 400,000 years ago, people were just using whatever bone fragments they had available,” Villa noted. “The Castel di Guido people had cognitive intellects that allowed them to produce complex bone technology. At other assemblages, there were enough bones for people to make a few pieces, but not enough to begin a standardized and systematic production of bone tools.”
The Castel di Guido hominins were pioneers. But they remained relatively isolated, with limited chances to pass on what they’d learned to others. Consequently, the techniques they perfected would need to be rediscovered independently by others, at various times in the future.
Top image: A closeup of a few of the 98 verified elephant bone tools found in Rome, Italy, which have been attributed to an archaic hominin species based on a recent study published in the Plos One journal. Source: Plos One
By Nathan Falde
On an Island, Elephants Shrink Surprisingly Fast
(Newser)
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Somewhere around 400,000 years ago, hulking elephants made their way to what we know now as the Italian island of Sicily. In a relative blink of the eye—roughly 40 generations—they shrank to miniature versions of their former selves, reports the New York Times. That’s one estimate provided by scientists in the journal Current Biology. Through analysis of ancient fossils of dwarf elephants on the island, they found that the creatures descended from behemoths that stood 12 feet tall and weighed 10 tons. But after the elephants arrived on the island—perhaps by swimming or a long-gone land bridge—a lack of food appears to have forced a quick change in stature. Researchers say that over 1,300 years, the elephants may have lost roughly 440 pounds per generation, according to Nature.
“We know that evolution can be rapid, but this is a striking example,” says Mirte Bosse of Wageningen University in the Netherlands, who was not involved with the study, per the Times. The island elephants eventually shrank to a height of 6 feet and a weight of 1.7 tons, per Gizmodo. For context, the researchers say this would be like a human shrinking to the size of a rhesus monkey. It’s possible the reduction in size played out over a longer stretch, but the 40-generation estimate—based on analysis of mitochondrial DNA—is at the fast end of the range. “The magnitude of dwarfing resulting from this rapid evolutionary process is truly striking, resulting in a loss of body mass of almost 85% in one of the largest ever terrestrial mammals,” says study author Axel Barlow of the UK’s Nottingham Trent University in a release. (Read more elephants stories.)
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