Almost 6 million year old “elephant cemetery” found in the United States

An ancient ‘elephant graveyard’ full of huge bones has been unearthed along what was once a prehistoric river in north Florida, USA.

The fossils of these long-extinct animals belong to the gomphotheres – a relative of modern elephants – and date back to about 5.5 million years ago, during the Miocene epoch.

“It was really exciting because it gave us the opportunity to not only see what a [gonfotério] adult, but also to carefully document every bone in its skeleton,” said Jonathan Bloch, curator of vertebrate paleontology at the Florida Museum of Natural History, who co-led the excavation.

“It’s exciting from a scientific point of view if you’re trying to understand the anatomy of these animals and something about their biology and evolution.”

I started finding toe and ankle bones one after another. As I continued digging, what turned out to be the ulna and radius [ossos longos do braço] began to be discovered.

Dean Warner, a retired chemistry teacher and Montbrook volunteer, in a statement

Not only were the bones much larger than any other individual we’ve seen, but they were actually in place, as if the animal had just lay down and died.

Jonathan Bloch, curator of vertebrate paleontology at the Florida Museum of Natural History

cemetery composition

The animals probably died hundreds of years apart, rather than all at once. Researchers believe that the adult drowned at this location, while the other animals were probably swept up by the water after their deaths and piled up in a bend in the river.

Species differences

Species in the gomphotheres family are typically distinguished by prey shape and body size. The tusks of the ancient Montbrook beasts have a unique enamel band, meaning these species are part of the genus Rhynchotheriumthe researchers said.

Millions of years ago, these relatives of elephants thrived in open savannas in Africa, Eurasia and the Americas.

However, grasslands gradually began to replace savannas in these areas due to cooling temperatures that began about 14 million years ago, and competition for limited resources after the arrival of mammoths and elephants ultimately drove the gomphotheres to extinction. about 1.6 million years ago.

The new discovery will help researchers better understand the life of these ancient proboscideans and the environments in which they lived, according to the researchers.

Eventually, the public will be able to see the largest specimen on display; Bloch and his team are planning to collect the adult gomphothere fossils and place them next to the massive mammoth and mastodon skeletons currently in the Florida Museum of Natural History.

“There’s a lot we can learn from these things, and we’re excited to do so in the future,” said Bloch.

With information from living science

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Source: Olhar Digital