Dwarf Mammoths Roamed Crete Millions of Years Ago
Posted on May 9, 2012
BBC News reports that mini mammoths (Mammuthus creticus) roamed the island of Crete millions of years ago. Adult dwarf mammoths were about three feet tall - around the size of a modern baby elephant.
The discovery was led by Victoria Herridge and Adrian Lister, palaeontologists from London's Natural History Museum. They published a paper about their findings in the Royal Society journal, Proceedings B. The researchers note that dwarfism is "a well-known evolutionary response of large mammals to insular environments, forming part of the 'island rule,' whereby large mammals evolve smaller size, and small mammals larger size, on islands."
The fossilized teeth of the dwarf mammoth was originally collected by Dorothea Bate in 1904. They were originally thought to belong to a dwarf elephant species. New analysis of the fossilized teeth indicates they were a type of mammoth. Victoria Herridge explains the fossil findings in this video from the London Natural History Museum. Take a look: