Rick Purnell writes ….

How did the elephant get its trunk?…

Roger Hamilton, a returning popular speaker and an environmental scientist, enlightened Teignmouth Mens’ Probus Club members with a slide show about the origins of elephants. Roger, from a child was fascinated with elephants and only returned to them in later life. The earliest known species is a 6” tall 5-6 Kg specimen, ‘Eritherium’ some 60 million years ago (mya) discovered in Morocco, North Africa. It had but an enlarged nose. By 56 mya the species had grown to 12” tall and 17kg fossilised in a phosphate mine in North Africa a ‘Phosphatherium’. By 46 mya in Algeria, ‘Numidstherium’ became larger at 250-300kg and had developed as longer snout (Tapier like) with protruding upper canine teeth looking more like mini tusks and grinding teeth set well back. Why North Africa? A different climate at that time with much higher temperatures, 6 degrees more than the present era, and wet with verdant swamps well suited to this species. By 37-30 mya ‘Phiomia’ became more look-a-like elephant shape with prominent tusks and the extended nose was now clearly a trunk used to assist feeding.   

Elephants ‘took off’ in the 20-10 mya period when grasslands were abundant and quick to adapt to changing environments and began migrating following the food chain with the trunk elongating to grab and twist vegetation and the familiar downward curved tusks and elephantine head and body shape and enlarged ears now weighing some 6 tons. As species adapted to different environments around the then world, as land masses divided, in isolation elephants evolution into more familiar species. About 6-4 mya ‘primelephos’ spawned 3 species, the African  ‘Loxodonts’, the smaller Asian Elephant and the Mastodons with the Woolly Mammoths surviving  until about 4000 years ago in the Northern Siberian Steppes.

So, the elephant got its trunk by natural evolution over 10’s of millions of years to successfully adapt to its environment & source of sustenance.

Because of human activity, the elephant’s habitat is shrinking unabated and as with many other species, man is also hunting it towards extinction.

The elephant remains a most successful and long-lived animal and whilst the human race is by comparison a far more recent species, mankind is unlikely to survive as long as the elephant – but not in our lifetime!

Chairman, Stephen Battersby, gave the vote of thanks.