Palaeoloxodon creutzburgi

Palaeoloxodon creutzburgi is an extinct species of elephant known from fossils found on the island of Crete. It is a descendant of the large mainland straight-tusked elephant and underwent insular dwarfism, reaching approximately 40 percent of its ancestor's size, about the size of the living Asian elephant, with an estimated body mass of around 3,000 kilograms. It is known from localities across the island, though the material is fragmentary, and P. chaniensis from Stylos and Vamos cave in Chania, west Crete, is considered a junior synonym. Like its ancestor it was probably a generalist feeder. It lived during the Middle and Late Pleistocene alongside the Candiacervus deer, the mouse Mus batae-minotaurus, the Cretan otter and the Cretan shrew. Its chronology is poorly constrained, although one specimen has been suggested to date to around 50,000 years ago using amino acid racemization dating.