Paleontologists have discovered an ancient elephant ancestor cemetery.
Archaeologists and volunteers excavate the gomphothere graveyard in northern Florida, covering the fossils in plaster casts to protect them. (Image credit: Florida Museum photo by Kristen Grace, CC BY)
In northern Florida, huge bones from an old "elephant graveyard" that was once a river have been discovered.
These long-extinct creatures were related to modern elephants by the genus gomphotheres, and their fossils date to the Miocene epoch, some 5.5 million years ago.
"It was very exciting because this gave us the opportunity to not only see what an adult [gomphothere] would have looked like, but also to very carefully document each and every bone in its skeleton," said Jonathan Bloch, a vertebrate paleontology curator at the Florida Museum of Natural History who co-led the excavation. "That's exciting from a scientific perspective if you're trying to understand the anatomy of these animals and something about their biology and evolution," Bloch said to Live Science.
The collection of gomphothere bones was found by researchers in 2022 at the Montbrook Site, a large-scale excavation site close to Gainesville. Although there had previously been some gomphothere bones discovered, the team was taken aback when a volunteer discovered the remains of an extremely huge person.
Illustrations of three extinct species within the Gomphotherium genus: G. simplicidens, top left; G. productum, top right; and G. calvertense, bottom. (Image credit: Florida Museum image by Merald Clark, CC BY)
"I started coming upon one after another of toe and ankle bones," recalled Dean Warner, a retired chemistry teacher and volunteer at Montbrook. What turned out to be the ulna and radius (long arm bones) began to be exposed as I dug more.
A total of one adult and at least seven young gomphotheres' complete skeletons were ultimately discovered by the team. According to the experts, the adult is about the same size as a current African elephant (Loxodonta africana) and stands 8 feet (2.4 meters) tall to the shoulders. This astounding size establishes a local record for the largest gomphothere.
“In addition to being significantly larger than any of the other people that we have seen, the bones were also in the exact same position as if the animal had just laid down and passed away”, according to Bloch.
Illustrations of the different gomphothere genera, including Rhynchotherium (bottom left), whose remains were found in Florida. (Image credit: Pedro Toledo, CC BY)
The animals probably didn't pass away all at once, but rather hundreds of years apart. The adult, according to the researchers, drowned here, while the other animals were probably washed away by the water after they perished and gathered in a river bend. Bloch described the accumulation as a "bonejam," a logjam being the result of too many loose logs blocking a river.
The shape of their tusks and body size serve as characteristic identifiers of species in the gomphotheres' family. According to the researchers, the tusks of the extinct Montbrook animals exhibit a distinctive enamel banding that indicates these species belong to the genus Rhynchotherium. These elephant ancestors previously flourished in broad savannas throughout Africa, Eurasia, and the Americas millions of years ago. A 2020 study published in the journal Paleobiology found that as temperatures began to cool in these regions around 14 million years ago, grasslands gradually began to replace savannas. Competition for scarce resources after the arrival of mammoths and elephants eventually drove gomphotheres to extinction about 1.6 million years ago.
Archaeologists and volunteers excavate the gomphothere graveyard in northern Florida, covering the fossils in plaster casts to protect them. (Image credit: Florida Museum photo by Kristen Grace, CC BY)
According to the researchers, the new finding will aid in the better understanding of the surroundings and lives of these ancient proboscideans. The greatest specimen will eventually be on display; Bloch and his team intend to put the fossils from the adult gomphothere together and position it next to the enormous mammoth and mastodon skeletons now on show at the Florida Museum of Natural History.
We have a lot to gain from these experiences, and Bloch expressed excitement about carrying them out in the future.
