elephant
Elephants are the largest existing land animals. Three living species are currently recognised: the African bush elephant, the African forest elephant, and the Asian elephant. They are the only surviving members of the family Elephantidae ...
Fossil
A fossil (from Classical Latin , ) is any preserved remains, impression, or trace of any once-living thing from a past geological age. Examples include bones, shells, exoskeletons, stone imprints of animals or microbes, objects preserved ...
s of ''Loxodonta adaurora'' have only been found in
Africa
Africa is the world's second-largest and second-most populous continent, after Asia in both cases. At about 30.3 million km2 (11.7 million square miles) including adjacent islands, it covers 6% of Earth's total surface area ...
, where they developed in the
Pliocene
The Pliocene ( ; also Pleiocene) is the epoch in the geologic time scale that extends from 5.333 million to 2.58L. africana ''evolved from '' L. atlantica''.The Anatomical Record: Advances in Integrative Anatomy and Evolutionary Biology Volume 293, Issue 1, Article first published online: 20 NOV 2009: http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/ar.21010/pdf, retrieved 2 December 2011. The same study concluded that ''Loxodonta adaurora'' was morphologically indistinguishable from '' Mammuthus subplanifrons'' and that these constituted the same species.