Palaeoloxodon cypriotes

Cyprus dwarf elephant Temporal range:
Tooth
Scientific classification
Kingdom:	Animalia
Phylum:	Chordata
Class:	Mammalia
Order:	Proboscidea
Family:	Elephantidae
Genus:	†Palaeoloxodon
Species:	†P. cypriotes
Binomial name
†Palaeoloxodon cypriotes (Bate, 1904)

Palaeoloxodon cypriotes, the Cyprus dwarf elephant, is an extinct species that inhabited the island of Cyprus during the Late Pleistocene. Remains comprise 44 molars, found in the north of the island, seven molars discovered in the south-east, a single measurable femur and a single tusk among very sparse additional bone and tusk fragments. The molars support derivation from the large straight-tusked elephant (Palaeoloxodon antiquus), that inhabited Europe since 780,000 years ago. The species is presumably derived from the older, larger P. xylophagou from the late Middle Pleistocene which reached the island presumably during a Pleistocene glacial maximum when low sea levels allowed a low probability sea crossing between Cyprus and Asia Minor. During subsequent periods of isolation the population adapted within the evolutionary mechanisms of insular dwarfism, which the available sequence of molar fossils confirms to a certain extent. The fully developed Palaeoloxodon cypriotes weighed not more than 200 kg (440 lb) and had a height of around 1 m (3.28 ft). The species became extinct around 12,000 years ago, around the time humans first colonised Cyprus.

Chronology

The Cyprus dwarf elephant is known from fossils dating from the Latest Pleistocene to earliest Holocene, approximately 11,000 BC. It is suggested that P. cypriotes is descended from Palaeoloxodon xylophagou, a species which is known from a partial skull collected near the village of Xylofagou in SE Cyprus dating to the late Middle Pleistocene (MIS 7, 243-191,000 years ago), which is larger than P. cypriotes. Both species are considered to have descended from the very large Palaeoloxodon antiquus (straight-tusked elephant) of mainland Europe and the Middle East. It is likely that they arrived in Cyprus by swimming the distance between the Karpas Peninsula and Cilicia in southeastern Anatolia during an episode of low sea level, which even considering additional exposed land area is 60 kilometers, further than the known swimming distance record for elelphants (48 kilometers). The youngest remains of P. cypriotes date to around 12,000 years before present.

Description

Palaeoloxodon cypriotes was around 1 metre tall, amongst the smallest known for dwarf elephants alongside the Sicillian Palaeoloxodon falconeri. The estimated body weight of P. cypriotes is only 200 kilogrammes, a weight reduction of 98% from its ancestors which weighed about 10 tonnes. Their molars however were about 40% of the size of the mainland straight-tusked elephants' molars. The factors responsible for the dwarfing of island mammals are thought to include the reduction in available food, predation and competition.

Excavations

Tusk of a young P. cypriotes

Remains of the first Cyprus Dwarf Elephant were discovered and documented by Dorothea Bate in 1902. She found the fossilized bones of the elephant in a cave in the Kyrenia hills of Cyprus. The species is also known under its synonym Elephas cypriotes.

Finds of whole or partial skeletons of this elephant are very rare. The first recorded find was by Dorothea Bate in a cave in the Kyrenia hills of Cyprus in 1902, described in a paper for the Royal Society in 1903 and in a later paper for Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society of London in 1905.

See also

• Dwarf elephant
• Elephas
• Cyprus dwarf hippopotamus

References

• Davies, P., & Lister, A. M., Palaeoloxodon cypriotes, the dwarf elephant of Cyprus: size and scaling comparisons with P. falconeri (Sicily-Malta) and mainland P. antiquus in Cavarretta et al., op. cit. pp. 479–480
• Masseti, M., Did endemic dwarf elephants survive on Mediterranean islands up to protohistorical times? in Cavarretta, Gioia, Mussi & Palombo, La terra degli Elefanti, The World of Elephants (Rome, 2001) pp. 402–406
• Palombo, M. R., Endemic elephants of the Mediterranean Islands: knowledge, problems and perspectives in Cavarretta et al., op. cit.
• Simmons, Alan H. (1999). Faunal extinction in an island society: pygmy hippopotamus hunters of Cyprus. Interdisciplinary Contributions to Archaeology. Kluwer Academic/Plenum Publishers. p. 382. doi:10.1007/b109876. ISBN 978-0-306-46088-3. OCLC 41712246.

External links

• Cranial evidence for the presence of a second endemic elephant species on Cyprus