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Ten Exceptional Ancient Elephants, From Small Swimming Creatures to Shovel-Tusked Beasts

A wide variety of the exotic animals evolved on Earth over the past 60 million years

Riley Black

Riley Black - Science Correspondent

April 3, 2025 8:00 a.m.

Ancient Elephant Illustration With Fossils

The tusks of ancient elephants came in a variety of shapes and sizes. Illustration by Emily Lankiewicz / Full Caption at Bottom of Article

Not so long ago, the trumpeting of elephants could be heard across a great deal of our planet. Wrinkly-skinned giants did not only inhabit Africa and southern Asia, but roamed from prehistoric Portugal across Eurasia, to the chilly landscapes of ancient Alaska and down into South America. And that was just during the Ice Age from about 11,700 to 2 million years ago, when mammoths, mastodons and several other forms of elephant were common parts of ecosystems all across the planet. Go back further and the fossil elephants are even stranger.

Elephants are incredibly ancient parts of our world. Technically called proboscideans, for the long trunks later forms would evolve, the very first appeared about 60 million years ago, when Earth was a global greenhouse where the very first tropical rainforests began to take root. From small and relatively meek beginnings, proboscideans eventually evolved into herbivorous, elephantine giants with a broad array of different tusk arrangements and shapes. When it comes to prehistoric elephants, mammoths are just the tip of the iceberg. Here we celebrate ten examples from the depths of elephant history to highlight the fantastic forms these beasts have taken throughout the Age of Mammals.

Phosphatherium

In life Phosphatherium looked more like a large hyrax than a modern elephant. DagdaMore via Wikipedia under CC By-SA 4.0 / Rose: The beginning of the age of mammals. Johns Hopkins University Press, 2006

If you saw Phosphatherium in life, you might not recognize the mammal as an elephant. The 56-million-year-old beast was similar in size and shape to a large rock hyrax, just a fraction of the size of today’s African elephants. But the anatomical details of Phosphatherium fossils found in Morocco are clear that the small mammal shared some key traits in common with elephants to the exclusion of other mammals, such as part of the upper jaw making up a border of the eye socket and enlarged lower incisor teeth.

So far as paleontologists have been able to tell from microscopic scratches on fossil teeth, Phosphatherium munched on leaves it plucked from shrubs and bushes. They probably ate insects and even small animals as they nibbled and browsed, but leaves were their mainstay. The cusps on their teeth, paleontologists have noticed, represent precursors of the broad, grinding molars that later elephants would rely on to pulp vegetation.

Moeritherium

Moeritherium was a semi-aquatic elephant that lived in ancient swamps. Momotarou2012 via Wikipedia under CC By-SA 3.0

In 1901, paleontologists working in the Fayum desert of Egypt found the bones of a bizarre mammal that lived among the ancient wetlands about 36 million years ago. Named Moeritherium, the animal stood a little more than two feet high at the shoulder and yet had such a long and round-looking body that it must have weighed over 500 pounds. The beast’s skull was strange, too, having a long and low profile but bearing enlarged, tusk-like incisor teeth in both jaws.

Moeritherium was not an ancestor to modern elephants. The creature was part of an early branch that thrived in wet habitats of ancient Africa and then entirely vanished. In fact, paleontologists hypothesize that Moeritherium lived more like a hippo than an elephant. Geochemical traces in the mammal’s bones that were affected by prehistoric water sources, such as what the mammal drank and how much time it spent in the water, suggests that Moeritherium was an amphibious herbivore that munched along through the shallows.

Barytherium

Barytherium was one of the first early elephants to grow to large size, weighing over two tons. DiBgd via Wikipedia under CC By-SA 4.0

For over 20 million years, proboscideans were relatively small mammals. None looked quite like tusked, trunk elephants as we know them today, and the largest were comparable in size to a large boar. Around 33 million years ago, however, some proboscideans started to live large. Found in the rocks of Egypt, Barytherium was one of these early giants.

Earlier proboscideans would have been literally overshadowed by Barytherium. The elephant relative stood over six feet tall at the shoulder and weighed about two tons. The mammal’s skull, however, was strange compared with those of both its predecessors and later relatives. Barytherium had four short tusks in both the upper and lower jaw, likely overlain by a large fleshy snout like that of an elephant seal. While not an ancestor of mammoths or more recent elephants, Barytherium still marks a time when proboscideans were beginning to get a size boost and evolve new tusk arrangements.

Deinotherium

The curved chin tusks of Deinotherium have perplexed paleontologists since its discovery. Alexxx1979 via Wikipedia under CC By-SA 4.0

Named in 1829, the “terrible beast” Deinotherium was one of the first fossil elephants paleontologists uncovered. Early experts weren’t quite sure what to make of it. Perhaps Deinotherium was a huge, tusked tapir. Then again, another expert speculated, the bones might have belonged to an enormous manatee relative that used its backward-pointing jaw tusks to anchor itself into the ocean bottom while sleeping. By the mid-19th century, however, experts recognized that Deinotherium was a huge fossil elephant, a hulking herbivore that spread through Africa and Eurasia between 1 million and 15 million years ago.

Deinotherium was a big proboscidean. The largest were over 12 feet high at the shoulder and weighed more than ten tons. All of them only had tusks in the lower jaw, a pair of backward-pointing spikes like the back of a claw hammer. Paleontologists aren’t sure what function, if any, these tusks served, but one hypothesis suggests Deinotherium used the tusks to move branches out of the way as they browsed and picked the most delectable leaves.

Amebelodon

Amebelodon was one of several “shovel-tuskers” that used their unusual jaws to cut through vegetation. Margret Flinsch via Wikipedia / Public Domain

Of all the fossil elephants uncovered so far, none have been as enigmatic as the “shovel tuskers.” Amebelodon was one of these strange elephants, an herbivore that roamed the middle of North America between 5 million and 15 million years ago and is immediately recognizable from elongated lower jaws tipped in long, squared-off tusks that created a shovel shape.

When Amebelodon was first named, in 1927, the jaw shape seemed to suggest that the elephant scooped up soft vegetation from lakes and ponds of its time. But later analysis of how the mammal’s tusks were worn down hints at something else. Amebelodon was a forest elephant, browsing on trees and using the lower tusks to scrape bark from trees. The teeth of other shovel-tuskers, such as Platybelodon from Asia, have similarly been reinterpreted as tools for scraping and cutting vegetation rather than shovels.

Stegodon

Stegodon that lived on islands were smaller than their continental counterparts. DiBgd via Wikipedia under CC By-SA 4.0

Many fossil elephants were giants in their habitats, much taller and more massive than most other herbivores. But sometimes prehistoric elephants shrunk down according to their surroundings. While some species of the fossil elephant Stegodon could get to be over 12 feet tall at the shoulder and weigh over 12 tons, Stegodon on the Pacific island of Flores shrunk down to be no larger than a calf and stood four feet tall at the shoulder.

Several species of Stegodon thrived in ancient Asia between 12,000 and 12 million years ago. As the populations spread, some Stegodon made their way to small islands in Southeast Asia, including Flores, where the tiny prehistoric human Homo floresiensis has also been found. Evolution often unfolds in strange ways on islands, and, in the case of the elephants, Stegodon evolved to be much smaller. The shift was likely caused by adapting to a smaller landmass with less available food for the elephants. Likewise, the absence of warm-blooded carnivores that would need a great deal of food, such as big cats, allowed the slow-breeding elephants to maintain a population there. Stegodon isn’t the only fossil elephant to have undergone such a change. Islands off California, in the Mediterranean and elsewhere also have fossils of small island elephants that evolved from larger ancestors.

Stegotetrabelodon

Tracks found in the United Arab Emirates indicate that Stegotetrabelodon moved in herds. DiBgd via Wikipedia under CC By-SA 4.0

If there were any contender for a real-life equivalent to the Oliphaunts of J.R.R. Tolkien’s Middle Earth, it would be Stegotetrabelodon. The hefty elephants, reaching more than 13 feet at the shoulder and weighing more than 11 tons, had a pair of tusks in both their upper and lower jaws. Some of these tusks could reach over nine feet long.

Stegotetrabelodon fossils have been found from Africa to the Arabian Peninsula in rocks between four million and eight million years old. Paleontologists have even uncovered footprints left by the elephants. Trackways uncovered in the United Arab Emirates show a herd of Stegotetrabelodon moving together, some of the sequences stretching for nearly a thousand feet.

Palaeoloxodon

Palaeoloxodon is often called the “straight-tusked elephant,” as its tusks don’t curve as much as those of other fossil elephants. Asier Larramendi via Wikipedia under CC By-SA 4.0

Mammoths and mastodons were not the only elephants wandering across the planet during the last Ice Age. In Europe and western Asia, one of the most common fossil pachyderms was the straight-tusked elephant Palaeoloxodon.

The straight-tusked elephants were big. The largest were over 13 feet tall at the shoulder and weighed more than 13 tons, living in woodlands and forests from prehistoric Portugal to Iran. There, the elephants browsed on whatever plant foods were available, from elm and spruce to thistles and mistletoe. Humans certainly would have known them. Stone tools and other clues associated with Neanderthals and their ancestors have been found associated with Palaeoloxodon fossils.

Cuvieronius

Cuvieronius was among the elephant species that traveled from North America to South America when ancient Panama connected the continents. Ghedo via Wikipedia under CC By-SA 4.0

Around 2.7 million years ago, a momentous change transpired across ancient America. After hundreds of millions of years of isolation from each other, North and South America were once again pushed close enough by continental drift to allow living things to venture from one landmass to the other. While giant ground sloths, armadillos and even terror birds wandered to the north, fossil elephants called gomphotheres were among the many animal groups to expand into South America. Cuvieronius was one of the adventurous elephants that traveled south.

The gomphotheres were forest elephants that munched on a variety of plants but gradually found themselves competing with mammoths and mastodons that were proliferating through the continent. So far as paleontologists have been able to reconstruct, Cuvieronius evolved in North America by 1.4 million years ago. While some Cuvieronius populations stayed in North America, some spread over the new land bridge and survived in South America, too, until about 12,000 years ago.

Mammut

Mammut lived in North America between 11,000 and 8 million years ago, making it a long-lived ancient elephant. Sergiodlarosa via Wikipedia under CC By-SA 3.0

Compared with Mammut, mammoths were newcomers. The genus, sometimes called American mastodons, evolved in North America about eight million years ago and spread through the continent’s forests. Whereas mammoths preferred the cold, dry grasslands that spread as Ice Age glaciers expanded, Mammut preferred the warmer, wetter habitats of Pleistocene forests and thrived during the interglacial reprieves from the ice.

At about nine feet tall at the shoulder and seven tons, Mammut were a little shorter and stockier-looking than mammoths. Mammut also had bumpy teeth compared with the flatter molars of mammoths, the name mastodon itself meaning “breast tooth” for the shape of the bumps. The shape led 18th-century naturalists who saw the teeth to speculate that Mammut was a predatory animal, and perhaps even still alive somewhere in the North American interior. Gut contents and other fossil evidence make clear that Mammut was only a danger to plants, however, and went extinct along with many other forms of megafauna around 11,000 years ago.