Platybelodon
| Platybelodon | ||||||||||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
Platybelodon skeleton |
||||||||||||
| Temporal occurrence | ||||||||||||
| Miocene | ||||||||||||
| 13.7 to 5.33 million years | ||||||||||||
| Locations | ||||||||||||
| Systematics | ||||||||||||
|
||||||||||||
| Scientific name | ||||||||||||
| Platybelodon | ||||||||||||
| Borissiak , 1928 | ||||||||||||
Platybelodon (also shovel tooth ) is an extinct genus of proboscis whose fossil remains come from the middle and late Miocene (13.7 to 5.332 mya ).
Like Gomphotherium and other Gomphotherids , Platybelodon had four tusks . In the upper jaw, these were greatly reduced and angled forward and downward. In the elongated lower jaw, the two flat incisors were fused and widened in the shape of a shovel.
Platybelodon was up to 6 meters long and 2.8 meters high. The herding animal weighed up to 4.5 tons.
It is believed that Platybelodon was at home in the swampy parts of the grasslands and dug up marsh plants with its shovel-like teeth with the help of its proboscis . Platybelodon is closely related to Amebelodon .
In Europe, the archaeological form of the Amebelodontinae (paddle elephants) was found, Archaeobelodon , which lived 15 million years ago. In 2004, paleontologists from Augsburg managed to excavate an almost complete skeleton. The world's only skeletal assembly of Archaeobelodon filholi can be seen in Paris . It is in the Muséum national d'histoire naturelle in the Jardin des Plantes .
species
- Platybelodon barnumbrowni
- Platybelodon dangheesis
- Platybelodon loomisi
Web links
- Platybelodon in The Paleobiology Database
Individual evidence
- ↑ Platybelodon. PHOENIX publishing services GmbH, accessed on November 3, 2011 .
