Paleontologists have unearthed several complete skeletons of gomphotheres — an extinct relative of elephants — at the Montbrook Fossil Dig in Florida, the United States.
Gomphotheres were a diverse group of extinct elephant-like animals. They were smaller than mammoths — about the same size as modern elephants.
These creatures first evolved in Africa in the early Miocene, roughly 23 million years ago, after which they dispersed into Europe and Asia.
By 16 million years ago, they’d reached North America via the Bering land bridge, and when the Isthmus of Panama rose above the sea 2.7 million years ago, gomphotheres were waiting on the shoreline to cross into South America.
Along the way, they evolved several unique features that allowed them to thrive in the new environments they encountered.
“This is a once-in-a-lifetime find,” said Dr. Jonathan Bloch, curator of vertebrate paleontology at the Florida Museum of Natural History.
Dr. Bloch and his colleagues unearthed 5.5-million-year-old gomphothere skeletons — including one adult and at least seven juveniles — at a locality called the Montbrook Fossil Dig.
“It’s likely the fossils were successively deposited or transported to the area,” said Dr. Rachel Narducci, collection manager of vertebrate paleontology at the Florida Museum of Natural History.
“Modern elephants travel in herds and can be very protective of their young, but I don’t think this was a situation in which they all died at once.”
“It seems like members of one or multiple herds got stuck in this one spot at different times.”
According to the paleontologists, the Montbrook gomphotheres belong to the genus Rhynchotherium, which was once widespread across North and Central America.
“We all generally know what mastodons and woolly mammoths looked like, but gomphotheres aren’t nearly as easy to categorize,” Dr. Narducci said.
“They had a variety of body sizes, and the shape of their tusks differed widely…
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