''Elephas platycephalus'' is an extinct species of large herbivorous mammals that were closely related to
Asian elephant
The Asian elephant (''Elephas maximus''), also known as the Asiatic elephant, is the only living species of the genus ''Elephas'' and is distributed throughout the Indian subcontinent and Southeast Asia, from India in the west, Nepal in the no ...
s. It lived between 130,000 and 700,000 years ago during the
Middle Pleistocene
The Chibanian, widely known by its previous designation of Middle Pleistocene, is an age in the international geologic timescale or a stage in chronostratigraphy, being a division of the Pleistocene Epoch within the ongoing Quaternary Period. Th ...
epoch. Fossils have been found in the upper
Sivalik Hills
The Sivalik Hills, also known as the Shivalik Hills and Churia Hills, are a mountain range of the outer Himalayas that stretches over about from the Indus River eastwards close to the Brahmaputra River, spanning the northern parts of the India ...
.
Taxonomy
Author and researcher Vincent Maglio suspected that another species, ''
Mammuthus meridionalis
''Mammuthus meridionalis'', or the southern mammoth, is an extinct species of mammoth native to Europe and Central Asia from the Gelasian stage of the Early Pleistocene, living from 2.5–0.8 mya.
Taxonomy
The taxonomy of extinct elephant ...
'' (syn. ''Elephas planifrons''), was a direct ancestor of ''E. platycephalus'' since both of the species appear quite similar. However, upon closely studying the fronto-parietal region of the skull as well as upper molars of the specimens belonging to both species, it was concluded that the two species differed radically.
References
Prehistoric elephants
{{Paleo-proboscidean-stub