Dec 8, 2022
Numidotherium, oh jolly, how I love you! It is the early proboscidean ever! Don't be alarmed by it's weird look, I will break it down for you!
What you are looking at here is an early elephant relative from the Eocene of northern Africa. It is bizarrely build, with surprisingly long legs adapted for terrestrial locomotion (compared to Meoritherium for example, which was more semi-aquatic) but they are sprawling like in a dinocephalian. It's skull is very short and domed with evidence for sexual dimorphism (males having larger domes). it appears to have been a browser and was the largest land animal in the formations it was found in. The trunk was probably very short, similar to a tapir and the tusks weren't present yet.