7/29/2019 Elephant Ancestor Fossils From Africa
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'Pushing back the fossil record': Eritherium azzouzorum.
The three living species of the orderProboscidea, the savanna
and forest African and
Asian elephants, surely rankamong the most bizarre and
extraordinarily derived
placental mammals. They are, however, relics of a long and once
species-rich lineage.
Thanks to a recently discovered fossil, we now know that this
evolutionary march to the
elephants began in Africa at least 60m years ago.
Dr Emmanuel Gheerbrant of the Musum National d'Histoire
Naturelle (MNHN) in
Paris has reported the discovery of an extinct species in
Morocco,Eritherium
azzouzorum, that pushes the oldest record of a proboscidean back
by five million years.
The previous record was held by an extinct member of another
genus found in the same
region,Phosphatherium, that is believed to have been a
dog-sized, amphibious, plant-
eating creature that looked much like a hippopotamus.
The discovery ofE azzouzorum, known from partial fossils of 15
individuals and
consisting primarily of parts of skulls, jaws and upper and
lower teeth, was made
possible by a Franco-Moroccan agreement that included, in
addition to the MNHN, the
Ministry of Energy and Mines (Rabat), Chrifien Phosphate Office
(Casablanca), Cadi
Ayyad University (Marrakech), and Chouaib Doukkali University
(El Jadida). The fossils
were unearthed in the north-east Ouled Abdoun basin. Its
phosphate deposits, including
the Sidi Chennane quarries, have proven to be a rich source for
early African mammals.
Dental and cranial morphology, including details of shapes,
sizes, proportions andsymmetry, reveal important derived
similarities shared only with other early genera of
Proboscidea and reversed in later descendants. Other characters
ofE azzouzorum are
reminiscent of groups that existed prior to the origin of the
proboscidean line. Although
it lacked a trunk and didn't look much like its later
descendants, it did have an enlarged
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New to Nature No 82: EritheriumazzouzorumA newly discovered
fossil reveals that the evolutionary march
towards elephants began at least 60m years ago
Quentin WheelerThe Observer, Saturday 1 September 2012
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first incisor, the precursor to a tusk.
This new species is significant for several reasons. First, it
suggests that the elephant
order originated earlier than previously thought and helps to
date an important step in
the placental tree. Second, although it retained many
similarities to earlier mammals, it
represents a major ev olutionary leap at the beginning of the
Eocene including a "large"
body size and lophodonty, that is, the appearance of ridges on
teeth perpendicular to the
jaw. An estimated 5kg body weight makes it the size of the
largest living hyrax, a
creature 18in to 20in long.
Finally, it fills a gap in the fossil record, providing evidence
of a transitional stage
between modern African ungulates and condylarth-like mammals,
that is, earlier
placental mammals that were common to the Paleocene.
Proboscideans are only one of five remarkably divergent orders
belonging to a larger
group known as the paenungulates. Other orders include Sirenia
(sea cows), Hyracoidea
(rodent-like hyraxes), and two extinct orders, one terrestrial
and rhinoceros-like
(Embrithopoda) and the other marine, amphibious and
hippopotamus-like
(Desmostylia).
This early appearance of a proboscidean agrees with the
suggestion of a rapid radiation
of paenungulate mammal orders at about the time of the KT
(Cretaceous-Tertiary)
boundary. Such a rapid mammal radiation is consistent, too, with
recent genomics
studies.
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