Palaeoloxodon naumanni

Palaeoloxodon naumanni is an extinct species of elephant that was native to the Japanese archipelago during the Middle to Late Pleistocene, sometimes called Naumann's elephant after the German geologist Heinrich Edmund Naumann, who first described remains of it in the late nineteenth century. Fossils attributed to it are also known from China, though their status is unresolved and some authors regard them as separate species. Males had a reconstructed shoulder height of 2.4 to 2.8 metres and females about 2 metres, relatively small compared with other non-dwarf Palaeoloxodon species. The tusks curved upward and were somewhat twisted in males but relatively straight in females, reaching a maximum length of about 2.2 to 2.4 metres. Like other Palaeoloxodon it had a bony parietal-occipital crest on the skull to anchor head muscles, though weakly developed, and a distinctive depression on the stylohyoid bone is unique to the species.