What does a gomphothere look like?

Gomphotheres were early elephants that looked different from modern elephants. Gomphotheres had 4 tusks; 2 straight ones in the upper jaw and 2 straight ones in the lower jaw. Unlike elephants today, the upper tusks were coated with enamel. Most Gomphotheres were similar in size to the Asian Elephant, however G.

How did gomphothere go extinct?

Possible causes for extinction The data from Middle and Late Pleistocene periods indicate that over time, a shift occurred in dietary patterns away from predominantly mixed feeders to more specialized feeders.

When did the Gomphotherium live?

Facts: name pronounced gom- foe-THEAR; scientific name — Gomphotherium calvertensis; name means “welded beast from Calvert Cliffs”; family — Gomphotheriidae; lived during Miocene epoch (eighteen million to five million years ago); size — about ten feet tall at shoulder, weighed four to six tons; diet — plants ( …

Who discovered the gomphothere?

Holliday and colleagues from the U.S. and Mexico began excavating the skeletal remains of two juvenile gomphotheres in 2007 after ranchers alerted them that the bones had been found in northwestern Sonora, Mexico. They didn’t know at first what kind of animal they were dealing with.

When did Gomphothere go extinct?

The demise of the last remaining gomphotheres may have been part of the megafaunal extinctions of the late Quaternary Period (2.6 million years ago to the present), a series of large-mammal die-offs that accompanied the worldwide retreat of the Pleistocene ice sheets.

How tall is the Gomphotherium?

Gomphotherium stood around 3 metres (9.8 ft) high with an estimated weight of 4-5 tons, and looked similar to a modern elephant.

How much bigger was a mammoth than an elephant?

Male woolly mammoths were thought to reach shoulder heights of up to 3.5m – roughly the size of an African elephant – and to weigh up to six tonnes. The imperial mammoth weighed over 10 tonnes and the Songhua River Mammoth of northern China weighed up to 15 tonnes.

What happened to the gomphotheres?

Gomphotheres were smaller than mammoths – about the same size as modern elephants. They once were widespread in North America, but until now they seemed to have disappeared from the continent’s fossil record long before humans arrived in North America, which happened some 13,000 to 13,500 years ago, during the late Ice Age.

What is a gomphotherid?

Gomphotheres are any members of the diverse, extinct taxonomic family Gomphotheriidae. Gomphotheres were elephant -like proboscideans, but not belonging to the family Elephantidae.

What is a nearly complete molar tooth from a prehistoric elephant?

This is an incredible example of the a nearly complete molar tooth from a prehistoric extinct elephant called Gomphotherium sp.. This giant of the last Ice Age was a bizarre prehistoric ancestor to the modern day elephant. Fossil teeth are…

Is this the first gomphothere found in North America?

“This is the first Clovis gomphothere, it’s the first archaeological gomphothere found in North America, it’s the first evidence that people were hunting gomphotheres in North America, and it adds another item to the Clovis menu,” Holliday said. This document is subject to copyright.