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After the dinosaur - kill asteroid struck Earth about 66 million years ago , it took only a few million years for the earliest known elephant relative to come out .
This was the dog - sizeEritherium , the early known proboscidian , which live around 60 million years ago in North Africa .
The new exhibit sports a full-scale model of one of the most iconic extinct elephant relatives — a woolly mammoth, depicted in the process of shedding its winter coat.
" But it did n’t look anything like a modern elephant,“Ross MacPhee , curator of " The surreptitious World of Elephants , " a Modern exhibit possible action Monday ( Nov. 13 ) at the American Museum of Natural History ( AMNH ) in New York City , narrate Live Science . " There were no enceinte tusk and no large body size . "
The 10 - pound ( 4.5 kilograms)Eritheriumis just one of the species spotlight in the showing , and one of more than 200 proboscidian species that have inhabit on Earth . Today , only three remain : the African savannah elephant ( Loxodonta africana ) , the African wood elephant ( Loxodonta cyclotis ) and the Asian elephant ( Elephas maximus ) .
These innovative elephant and their proboscidian cousins are the principal drawing card of the new display . But a few iconic pachyderms slip the show , including a life history - size poser of a 4 - foot - tall ( 1.2 metre ) mama Sicilian nanus elephant ( Palaeoloxodon falconeri ) and her very hairy calfskin , as well as a vast framework of a moltingwoolly mammoth(Mammuthus primigenius ) .
“The Secret World of Elephants,” has life-size models of an adult and calf pair of dwarf elephants (Palaeoloxodon falconeri). These extinct animals, which lived in what is now Sicily, grew to only about 4 feet tall at their shoulders.
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Proboscideans did n’t always front like today ’s mintage ; they reach modern size only around 40 million years ago , when the 2 - long ton ( 1.8 metric tons)Barytherium — which was outfitted with eight very short tusk , four on top and four below — uprise .
And once they were big , some proboscideans shrank . These creatures often swim to , or got stranded on , islands . And due to theisland core — that small fauna on islands tend to evolve into giant versions of their mainland relative , and big brute run to germinate into dwarf versions of their mainland relatives — they downsized . Over time , " they evolved smaller body size because you need less food for thought , less water — it ’s easier to walk , so also for your joints , it ’s secure " to be small , saidAlexandra van der Geer , a paleontologist at Naturalis Biodiversity Center in the Netherlands who served as a adviser for the exhibit and helped produce the Sicilian dwarf elephant framework .
“The Secret World of Elephants,” has life-size models of an adult and calf pair of dwarf elephants (Palaeoloxodon falconeri). These extinct animals, which lived in what is now Sicily, grew to only about 4 feet tall at their shoulders.
Interestingly , the enceinte and small elephant on record came from the same genus : Palaeoloxodon . The largest elephant , P. antiquus — a 13 - foot - marvelous ( 4 m ) , flat - tusk beast from Europe — probably swam to Sicily , where its descendants establish ascent to the 98 % lighter midget , P. falconeri .
Meanwhile , the earliest known mammoth ( Mammuthus subplanifrons ) germinate around 5 million years ago in South Africa . Woolly mammoths evolved about 800,000 years ago , when go around into Eurasia and eventually North America . Again , due to the island burden , a " mini - gigantic " come forth on the Channel Islands off California . think to go up from a Columbian mammoth ( Mammuthus columbi ) , the pygmyMammuthus exilisstood about 5.5 feet ( 1.7 m ) tall at the berm .
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The exhibition features a life-size model of an African elephant — the largest living land animal. A video projection shows the skeleton of this massive mammal and provides an inside look at how it processes the huge amount of food it eats — about 300 to 500 pounds (136 to 226 kilograms) per day — and elephant gestation, which can last for nearly two years, longer than any other living mammal.
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Many proboscideans went extinct at the end of the last water ice age , around 12,000 years ago . The reasons for this mass dice - off are n’t altogether understood , but it ’s likely that both mood change and human hunter play a role , studieshave found .
The life-size model of the dwarf elephant calf that once lived on Sicily.
Today , research continues to let on the secret populace of elephants . For instance , DNA shows that their closest relative are n’t hippos or rhinos , which also have blockheaded , grey skin , butrather manatees , dugongs , and furred , coney - size of it coney . The " Secret World of Elephants " will run for at least a year at the AMNH before traveling the res publica .
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