#gomphotheres

[quaggasculpture]

Stuttgarter Gomphotheriums Oficially opened in vitual way 2weeks ago. #gomphotherium #gomphotheres #gompho #gomphotheriumangustidens (at Naturkundemuseum Am Löwentor in Stuttgart) https://www.instagram.com/p/CHGnDpEDSqB/?igshid=1o2yzwibary8i

[jurassicsunsets]

Does it bother you as much as it bothers me when videogames/movies etc. depict mammoths with four tusks? Like??? It wouldn't work????

Mammoths didn’t have four tusks - but other extinct elephants certainly did!

Two main groups - the gomphotheres and the amebelodontids - are well-known (uh, as much as these things can be) for having not one, but two sets of tusks. Specifically, one set formed from the upper incisors, and one set formed from the lower incisors. 

(Gomphotherium, an elephant-like creature with a shorter trunk and a much longer lower jaw than a modern elephant. Image by Nobu Tamura.)

(Platybelodon, another elephant-like creature with a proportionally short trunk and long upper jaw. Image by Tim Bertelink)

You might be thinking, “What do you mean two groups? Those both look the same!” And you’d be right - at least from the side. If you shift your perspective to look at the lower jaws you see a very different story:

(Jaw of Gomphotherium. The two tusks are thin and close together at the end of a moderately elongated jaw)

(Jaw of Platybelodon. The  two tusks are broad and flat at the end of a very elongated and flattened jaw.)

Holy tusks, batman! That’s some big difference between the two. What were they for?

The general resemblance of the jaw to a shovel has invited a lot of hypotheses - elephants like water, after all, so maybe these tusks were for digging in mud or lakebeds for soft plants! This has become a popular idea, so much so that the name “shovel-tusker” has become used for these groups. 

(This isn’t an entirely inaccurate description of amebelodontids. Here’s the lower jaw of Platybelodon, with a coal shovel for comparison and scale [they’re the same size and shape, if you can’t see the image]:)

However, the heavy molars and patterns of dental wear suggest that amebelodontids were not eating soft water plants, but rather tough, woody vegetation! And their lower tusks show fine parallel scratches, not the deep pits on the tusks of modern rooting animals. These together suggest that amebelodontids used their tusks to “saw” off tree branches before pulling them into their mouths with the trunk (As a sidenote - babies had significantly reduced lower tusks compared to adults. This may be because as elephants, they probably had significant parental care, and as mammals they drank milk).

Gomphotheres seem to have somewhat similar diets - analysis of wear patterns and of isotopes in their teeth suggests they had varied diets that included grasses and woody plants. The teeth definitely seem to indicate tougher diets than water plants - as with amebelodontids, it’s suggested that bark could form a not insigificant component of their diet. I haven’t been able to find anything specifically on the use of the tusk, but a use in stripping bark from plants seems reasonable to me.

[decodinghinduism]

Proof of Ram 1.6 Millions years ago

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[wildlife-planet]

What Happened To Gomphotheres An Elephant Size Giant Who Once Roamed America?

If you were transported back 13,000 years ago, there were other Elephants sized giants grazing the lands of North America, they were called Gomphotheres.

Gomphotheres roamed North America some 13,000 years ago, and were roughly the same size as our modern day elephants, so why did they go extinct? READ MORE Read the full article

[paleontologyworld]

Platybelodon skeleton from the Gomphotheres - Extinct Elephant type animals from the Miocene and Pliocene epochs, 12-1.6 million years ago. Located at the Rock and Penjing museum, Wuhan, Hubei, China. 26 Strangest Prehistoric Creatures >>> http://bit.ly/2GUvhmi

[lostbeasts]

Anancus. A Pleistocene gomphothere. It had two tusks instead of the four that gomphotheres usually had. Its two tusks were far larger in proportion to their bodies than modern elephants- being up to 13 metres in length.