Here ’s test copy yet again that some of the cutest animals to ever walk the Earth are now long extinct — it seems islands in the Mediterranean may once have been crawl with tiny , midget mammoths .
Thenewly identified Mammuthus creticushas been identified from previously misattributed os and novel research , and this tiny mammoth would have fend just 1.13 - cadence - tall at the shoulder .
The fossil teeth held in the Natural History Museum were in the beginning thought to belong to a gnome directly - horn elephant Palaeoloxodon antiquus , but researchers have now render that the teeth are in reality those of a gigantic , not an elephant . They now think M. creticus was most closely related to either M. meridionalis ( who kicked around Europe 2.5 million to 800,000 years ago ) or the erstwhile M. rumanus , which think of the miniskirt - mammoth may have strike Crete as long ago as 3.5 million year .
This is an model of what ’s known asisland dwarfism , which along with the companionisland gigantism , stand for braggart fauna evolve small , and small animals evolve big . The elephant / mammoth debate is part ofa larger , on-going discussion , which turn over into DNA analytic thinking as well . Regardless if this is an elephant or a mammoth , it would make an endearing familiar positron emission tomography with apygmy hippo .
Image : Peter Maasvia Wikimedia Commons
EvolutionMammothsScience
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