Discovery of prehistoric elephant bones in Germany

Recently, a museum in Germany announced bone samples belonging to the extinct prehistoric elephant Deinotherium .

Deinotherium elephants are a genus of the elephant family Deinotheriidae and were once distributed in present-day Eurasia and Africa. This is a large creature that existed 12,000 - 10 million years ago, is related to today's elephants, and also has an appearance similar to elephants except that the tusks on the lower jaw grow backwards.

Deinotherium elephants are a genus of the elephant family Deinotheriidae.

According to Mr. Peter Kapustin, Director of the Urzeit Prehistoric Museum in Taufkirchen (Germany), these specimens were found by his two sons a year earlier. Initially, the two boys only found one bone. After large-scale excavations near a small Bavarian village in the Erding district near Munich, a total of 120 bone fragments were found. In it, they found the bones of an adult individual and an individual in development age.

Mr. Peter Kapustin believes that these are the skeletons of elephants that once lived on the outskirts of Munich. He said the Deinotherium elephants that lived in Europe and Africa in the mid-Mesozoic to early Pleistocene were the largest individuals with an adult height of up to 5 meters and a weight of about 8.8-12 meters. tons with a body length of 7m. The most interesting feature of this species is that their lower jaw grows long and curves downward , creating two tusks that curve backward about 1 meter, while in other elephant species, the tusks grow on both sides of the upper jaw.

Restoration expert Nils Knoetschke said some bone fragments were in a severely broken state when found and he had to use professional measures to restore and excavate the skeleton intact.

This unique discovery is currently on display at the Urzeit prehistoric museum run by Mr. Peter Kapustin. In the coming time, the museum plans to complete the restoration of the remaining bones and put them on display for visitors.