Straight-tusked elephant

The straight-tusked elephant, Palaeoloxodon antiquus, is an extinct species of elephant that lived in Europe and Western Asia during the Middle and Late Pleistocene. It was one of the largest elephants known, with mature bulls averaging about 4 metres at the shoulder and 13 tonnes in weight, among the largest land mammals ever. It lived much like modern elephants, in herds of adult females and juveniles with solitary adult males, and was mainly associated with temperate and Mediterranean woodland and forest, spreading as far north as Britain and Denmark in warm interglacial periods while mammoths held northern Europe in cold ones. Cut-marked skeletons, stone tools and a wooden spear show that early humans, including Homo heidelbergensis and Neanderthals, scavenged and hunted it. It was the ancestor of the Mediterranean dwarf elephants, and the youngest remains, from the Iberian Peninsula, are about 44,000 years old.