Gomphothere

Gomphotherium angustidens

• North and South America
• Europe & Asia
• Africa

The gomphotheres ( Gomphotheriidae ) are an extinct family of mammoths; they lived during the Tertiary and the Quaternary and are considered ancestors of elephants and mastodons rights. They are in addition to the rights mastodons and the Stegodonten the third family of the mastodon. Early gomphotheres had four tusks and nodular molars. Later forms had only two tusks in the upper jaw and molars with partial lamellar tooth structures.

History of development

One of the earliest forms was Palaeomastodon. This genus was restricted to the area of ​​origin of the family and was only found in Africa, but with the genus Gomphotherium reached the gomphotheres in the Miocene as the first proboscids Eurasia. From there they spread out to North America, which was temporarily connected in the Tertiary with Asia. In this early genus four tusks were almost straight. The lower were usually close to each other in long narrow lower jaw and could probably be used as a shovel. The upper tusks were covered by a fusion band that probably the tusks of all previous proboscids covered, but has disappeared in today's elephants. They resembled tusks and were probably used for digging.

Later Gomphotheriidae as Anancus only had tusks in the upper jaw and remembered with their longer legs and shorter skull already much more elephants than the early gomphotheres. The genera Stegomastodon and Cuvieronius from the Pleistocene of South America survived until the appearance of the first people on the continent and died out only a few thousand years. Due to their characteristics, the teeth gomphotheres be provided to the mastodon. Most mastodons had teat -shaped molars, while the elephants are characterized by molars with a lamellar Kauoberfläche.

Nevertheless, the position of the Gomphoterium is uncertain in the tusker systematics. They comprise a large group of animals trunk, which was represented for a long time almost worldwide. Due to its elongated shape of the skull and the most straight tusks they differ from the other mastodons. Even so they were combined into the group of Gomphotheriidae. An even closer group of trilophodonten gomphotheres are sometimes referred to as Trilophodontidae.

Akin to the gomphotheres are the shovel elephant. For them, the two lower tusks have grown into a shovel, with which the animals probably dug for water plants in the muddy bottom of water bodies. Known representatives of the blade Elephants are Platybelodon from Africa and Asia, and the American Amebelodon. In Europe, the original form of the shovel elephant was found: Archaeobelodon who lived 15 million years ago. 2004 succeeded Paleontologists from Augsburg, to excavate a nearly complete skeleton. In Paris, the world's only skeleton mounting a Archaeobelodon is filholi to see; it is in the " Muséum National d' Histoire Naturelle" in the Jardin de Plantes. The local " Galeries d' anatomy comparée & de Paleontology " show, a museum collection of recent and fossil skeletons, which opened in 1898.

Genera

• Amebelodon
• Platybelodon
• Gomphotherium
• Anancus
• Cuvieronius
• Stegomastodon
• Notiomastodon