Palaeoloxodon naumanni

''Palaeoloxodon naumanni'', occasionally called Naumann's elephant, is an extinct species belonging to the genus ''Palaeoloxodon'' found in the Japanese archipelago during the Middle to Late Pleistocene around 430,000 to 24,000 years ago. It is named after Heinrich Edmund Naumann who discovered the first fossils at Yokosuka, Kanagawa, Japan. Fossils attributed to ''P. naumanni'' are also known from China and Korea, 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'' 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 conifers and cool-temperate deciduous trees.

The ancestor of ''Palaeoloxodon naumanni'' moved from the Eurasian 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 in Nagano Prefecture, together with many lithic and bone tool artifacts.

The range of ''P. naumanni'' extends across the Japanese archipelago, north to Hokkaido, where during the Late Pleistocene it alternated with the woolly mammoth 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, 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, 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 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, during the early stages of the Last Glacial Maximum. Any younger dates were considered unreliable.

See also

* Chūrui Naumann Elephant Museum

References

External links

{{Taxonbar, from=Q1593261

Palaeoloxodon
Pleistocene proboscideans
Pleistocene mammals of Asia
Extinct animals of Japan
Fossil taxa described in 1924