Phanagoroloxodon

Phanagoroloxodon is a genus of extinct elephant known from a single species, Phanagoroloxodon mammontoides, described from a partial skull found on the banks of the Psekups river in the northwestern Caucasus of Russia, of probable Late Pliocene to Early Pleistocene age. The skull resembles both Elephas and the mammoths of the genus Mammuthus, with a saddle-like groove along the midline and a rounded nasal process but a skull base almost without tubercles. Its position among elephants is debated: it has been placed closer to Elephas and Mammuthus than to Loxodonta, and one author gave it a tribe of its own.