Elephas naumanni
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''Palaeoloxodon naumanni'', occasionally called Naumann's elephant, is an extinct species belonging to the genus ''
Palaeoloxodon ''Palaeoloxodon'' is an extinct genus of elephant. The genus originated in Africa during the Pliocene era, and expanded into Eurasia during the Pleistocene era. The genus contains some of the largest known species of elephants, over four metres t ...
'' found in the Japanese archipelago during the Middle to Late
Pleistocene The Pleistocene ( , often referred to as the ''Ice age'') is the geological Epoch (geology), epoch that lasted from about 2,580,000 to 11,700 years ago, spanning the Earth's most recent period of repeated glaciations. Before a change was fina ...
around 430,000 to 24,000 years ago. It is named after Heinrich Edmund Naumann who discovered the first fossils at
Yokosuka is a city in Kanagawa Prefecture, Japan. , the city has a population of 409,478, and a population density of . The total area is . Yokosuka is the 11th most populous city in the Greater Tokyo Area, and the 12th in the Kantō region. The city ...
,
Kanagawa is a Prefectures of Japan, prefecture of Japan located in the Kantō region of Honshu. Kanagawa Prefecture is the List of Japanese prefectures by population, second-most populous prefecture of Japan at 9,221,129 (1 April 2022) and third-dens ...
,
Japan Japan ( ja, 日本, or , and formally , ''Nihonkoku'') is an island country in East Asia. It is situated in the northwest Pacific Ocean, and is bordered on the west by the Sea of Japan, while extending from the Sea of Okhotsk in the north ...
. Fossils attributed to ''P. naumanni'' are also known from
China China, officially the People's Republic of China (PRC), is a country in East Asia. It is the world's most populous country, with a population exceeding 1.4 billion, slightly ahead of India. China spans the equivalent of five time zones and ...
and
Korea Korea ( ko, 한국, or , ) is a peninsular region in East Asia. Since 1945, it has been divided at or near the 38th parallel, with North Korea (Democratic People's Republic of Korea) comprising its northern half and South Korea (Republic o ...
, though the status of these specimens are unresolved, with some authors regarding these as belonging to separate species.


Description

''Palaeoloxodon naumanni,'' like other members of the genus ''
Palaeoloxodon ''Palaeoloxodon'' is an extinct genus of elephant. The genus originated in Africa during the Pliocene era, and expanded into Eurasia during the Pleistocene era. The genus contains some of the largest known species of elephants, over four metres t ...
'' had a pair of long straight tusks and a parietal-occipital crest on the top of the head. These tusks grew more than 2.4 m in length, 20 cm in diameter. It was a little smaller than Asian elephants averaging to . It lived in forest which mixed subarctic
conifer Conifers are a group of conifer cone, cone-bearing Spermatophyte, seed plants, a subset of gymnosperms. Scientifically, they make up the phylum, division Pinophyta (), also known as Coniferophyta () or Coniferae. The division contains a single ...
s and cool-temperate
deciduous tree In the fields of horticulture and Botany, the term ''deciduous'' () means "falling off at maturity" and "tending to fall off", in reference to trees and shrubs that seasonally shed leaves, usually in the autumn; to the shedding of petals, afte ...
s. The ancestor of ''Palaeoloxodon naumanni'' moved from the
Eurasia Eurasia (, ) is the largest continental area on Earth, comprising all of Europe and Asia. Primarily in the Northern and Eastern Hemispheres, it spans from the British Isles and the Iberian Peninsula in the west to the Japanese archipelago a ...
n continent to Japan via a land bridge; it subsequently evolved independently and spread throughout Japan after the land bridge was covered by rising seawaters. ''Palaeoloxodon naumanni'' was hunted by the inhabitants of the time. Some fossils were found around
Lake Nojiri is in the town of Shinano, Nagano, Shinano, Kamiminochi District, Nagano Prefecture, Japan. Second to Lake Suwa among lakes in Nagano Prefecture, Nojiri is a resort, the location of the first pumped-storage hydroelectricity in Japan, and the site ...
in
Nagano Prefecture is a landlocked prefecture of Japan located in the Chūbu region of Honshū. Nagano Prefecture has a population of 2,052,493 () and has a geographic area of . Nagano Prefecture borders Niigata Prefecture to the north, Gunma Prefecture to the ...
, together with many lithic and bone tool artifacts. The range of ''P. naumanni'' extends across the Japanese archipelago, north to
Hokkaido is Japan's second largest island and comprises the largest and northernmost prefecture, making up its own region. The Tsugaru Strait separates Hokkaidō from Honshu; the two islands are connected by the undersea railway Seikan Tunnel. The la ...
, where during the Late Pleistocene it alternated with the
woolly mammoth The woolly mammoth (''Mammuthus primigenius'') is an extinct species of mammoth that lived during the Pleistocene until its extinction in the Holocene epoch. It was one of the last in a line of mammoth species, beginning with '' Mammuthus subp ...
during warmer intervals. Remains from mainland China and Korea have been attributed to this species by some authors. However, other authors attribute the Chinese remains, which are considerably larger than Japanese ''P. naumanii'', to the separate species '' P. huaihoensis.''


Discovery and nomenclature

In 1860, the first fossil record was found at Yokosuka and the bottom of
Seto Inland Sea The , sometimes shortened to the Inland Sea, is the body of water separating Honshū, Shikoku, and Kyūshū, three of the four main islands of Japan. It serves as a waterway connecting the Pacific Ocean to the Sea of Japan. It connects to Osaka ...
, Japan. Heinrich Edmund Naumann researched and reported these fossils in “''Ueber japanische Elephanten der Vorzeit''” (1882). Naumann classified the fossil as ''Elephas namadicus'' Falconer & Cautley. In 1924, researched fossils which were found in
Hamamatsu is a city located in western Shizuoka Prefecture, Japan. the city had an estimated population of 791,707 in 340,591 households, making it the prefecture's largest city, and a population density of . The total area of the site was . Overview ...
, Shizuoka and reported the elephant was a new subspecies and designated the fossil ''Elephas namadicus naumannni'' in “Notes on a fossil elephant from Sahamma, Totomi” (1924). Tadao Kamei identified ''Elephas namadicus naumanni'' as a new species, called ''Palaeoloxodon naumanni'', from fossils found at Lake Nojiri. It has also been called ''Elephas naumanni''.


Evolution and extinction

The oldest known dates for the species are from
MIS MIS or mis may refer to: Science and technology * Management information system * Marine isotope stage, stages of the Earth's climate * Maximal independent set, in graph theory * Metal-insulator-semiconductor, e.g., in MIS capacitor * Minimally ...
12, around 430 kya, where it replaces '' Stegodon orientalis'', which had arrived from mainland East Asia several hundred thousand years prior. The youngest dates for the species are around 24 kyr
Before Present Before Present (BP) years, or "years before present", is a time scale used mainly in archaeology, geology and other scientific disciplines to specify when events occurred relative to the origin of practical radiocarbon dating in the 1950s. Becaus ...
, during the early stages of the
Last Glacial Maximum The Last Glacial Maximum (LGM), also referred to as the Late Glacial Maximum, was the most recent time during the Last Glacial Period that ice sheets were at their greatest extent. Ice sheets covered much of Northern North America, Northern Eur ...
. Any younger dates were considered unreliable.


See also

*
Chūrui Naumann Elephant Museum The opened in Makubetsu, Hokkaidō, Japan in 1988. It commemorates the chance discovery of a fossilized Naumann's elephant in Chūrui, now Now most commonly refers to the present time. Now, NOW, or The Now may also refer to: Organiza ...


References


External links

{{Taxonbar, from=Q1593261 Palaeoloxodon Pleistocene proboscideans Pleistocene mammals of Asia Extinct animals of Japan Fossil taxa described in 1924