2023-06-14 07:10:27
“It’s a once-in-a-lifetime discovery. About 5.5 million years ago, several gomphotheres – extinct relatives of elephants – died in or near a river in northern Florida, USA.
And although their deaths likely occurred hundreds of years apart, their bodies were all deposited in the same place, buried alongside other animals who suffered the same fate.
It seems that members of one or more herds got stuck in this place at different times.
Rachel Narducci, Head of the Vertebrate Paleontology Collection at the Florida Museum
Today, the river is gone, but the fossils of the gomphotheres remained and were discovered by a team of researchers and volunteers from the Florida Museum of Natural History. A rare and precious find.
” Something special “
The site of “Montbrook” was known to paleontology enthusiasts for ancient discoveries of bones by the owner of the land, in 2015. However, nothing suggested the extent of the treasure buried in its clay and sandy soils.
Dean Warner, a retired chemistry teacher and volunteer at Montbrook first found “a hinged foot of something very large.” “Then I found bones corresponding to the toes and ankles,” she says.
And as I continued to dig, the ulna and the radius appeared. We all knew we were discovering something special.
Dean Warner
Teams from the Florida Museum of Natural History have thus updated the complete skeleton – tusks included – of what could be the largest gomphothera ever discovered in Florida, as well as those of at least seven juvenile specimens.
Zoom on the gomphotheres
Gomphotheres are the ancestors of elephants. Their reign lasted more than 20 million years and during this long period, they invaded all the continents.
They first evolved in Africa during the early Miocene, about 23 million years ago, after which they dispersed to Europe and Asia.
The prehistoric cousins of the pachyderms had two to four tusks whose shape and size differed according to the specimens, an elongated head and a small trunk.
The height at the shoulders of the gomphothere discovered at Montbrook has been estimated at nearly 2.5 meters. His skull extended over 2.75 meters.
This “unique” and incredible discovery should allow scientists to learn more about the prehistoric cousins of elephants and the fauna that ruled the United States at that time.
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