Could be evidence for a new (extinct) ellephant species and the males really were jumbos.
Fossilized footprints found on a beach in southern Spain betray what may have been a nursery for an extinct species of elephant.
The track-rich coastal site, which scientists have dubbed the Matalascañas Trampled Surface, is typically covered by 1½ meters of sand, says Clive Finlayson, an evolutionary biologist at the Gibraltar National Museum. But storm surges in the spring of 2020 washed away much of that sand and exposed the
preserved footprints of ancient elephants, cattle, deer, pigs, wolves, water birds and even Neandertals, Finlayson and colleagues report September 16 in
Scientific Reports. The sandy-clay sediments hosting this trove of tracks were probably laid down about 106,000 years ago, previous studies suggest.
Among the newly uncovered tracks are the first-of-their-kind footprints of newborn
straight-tusked elephants (
Palaeoloxodon antiquus), an extinct species that probably died out during the last ice age (
SN: 6/13/17). The teeny tracks — which measure 9.6 centimeters across, about the size of a drink coaster — suggest that the petite, possibly 2-month-old pachyderms stood about 66 centimeters tall at their shoulders and weighed around 70 kilograms, slightly heftier than a Newfoundland dog.
Based on previous finds elsewhere of actual bones, adult straight-tusked elephants may have weighed 5.5 metric tons for females and a whopping 13 tons for males.
https://www.sciencenews.org/article/fossil-tracks-footprints-ancient-elephant-nursery
