Cyprus Dwarf Elephant
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| Cyprus Dwarf Elephant | ||||||||||||||||
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| Elephas (Palaeoloxodon) cypriotes Bate |
The Cyprus Dwarf Elephant (Elephas cypriotes) is an extinct species of elephant related to the living Asian Elephant.
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[edit] Description
Believed to be descended from the Straight-tusked Elephant, this much smaller species inhabited Cyprus and some other Mediterranean islands during the Late Pleistocene. Its estimated body weight was only some two hundred kilogrammes, a weight reduction of ninety-eight per cent from its ancestors which weighed about ten metric tonnes. Molars of the dwarf are less reduced in scale, being some forty per cent of the size of the mainland straight-tusked elephants.
The factors responsible for the dwarfing of island mammals are thought to include the reduction in food availability, predation and competition.
The Cyprus dwarf elephant survived at least until 9,000 BC. The species is also known as Elephas cypriotes Bate, after the first palaeontologist to find and report it, Dorothea Bate.[1]
[edit] Excavations
Finds of whole or partial skeletons of this elephant are very rare. The first recorded find was by Dorothea Bate in a cave in the Kyrenia hills of Cyprus in 1902, described in a paper for the Royal Society in 1903[2] and in a later paper for Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society of London in 1905.[3]
[edit] See also
[edit] References
- A.H. Simmons, A.H., Faunal Extinction in an Island Society: Pygmy Hippopotamus Hunters of Cyprus (New York, 1999, ISBN 0306460882)
- Masseti, M., Did endemic dwarf elephants survive on Mediterranean islands up to protohistorical times? in Cavarretta, Gioia, Mussi & Palombo, La terra degli Elefanti, The World of Elephants (Rome, 2001) pp. 402-406
- Davies, P., & Lister, A. M., Palaeoloxodon cypriotes, the dwarf elephant of Cyprus: size and scaling comparisons with P. falconeri (Sicily-Malta) and mainland P. antiquus in Cavarretta et al., op. cit. pp. 479-480
- Palombo, M. R., Endemic elephants of the Mediterranean Islands: knowledge, problems and perspectives in Cavarretta et al., op. cit.
[edit] Notes
- ^ Reese, David S.: Men, Saints, or Dragons? in Folklore, Vol. 87, No. 1 (1976), pp. 89-95
- ^ Bate, D. M. A.: Preliminary Note on the Discovery of a Pigmy Elephant in the Pleistocene of Cyprus in Proceedings of the Royal Society of London Vol. 71 (1902 - 1903), pp. 498-500
- ^ ’’Further Note on the Remains of Elephas cypriotes from a Cave-Deposit in Cyprus’’ by Dorothea M. A. Bate in Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society of London, Series B, Containing Papers of a Biological Character, Vol. 197 (1905), pp. 347-360
