YOU wouldn鈥檛 have recognised Eritherium as an elephant when it was roaming . It weighed only 5 kilograms, and its canines were nothing like tusks. But detailed study of the newly discovered fossil鈥檚 teeth, jaws and skull shows it to be the oldest member yet found of the order , of which elephants are the only living survivors.
The new find may shed light on the origins of elephants and other mammals, says of the French National Museum of Natural History in Paris (). It shows elephants were making evolutionary progress 5 million years after the dinosaurs died out. 鈥淭he discovery of Eritherium supports an explosive radiation of placental mammals鈥� in that period, he says.
This contrasts with the idea that the evolutionary roots of most modern groups go back long before the dinosaur extinction. Analysis of the DNA of living mammals supports that timetable, but palaeontologists say that fossil evidence is lacking.
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