An extinct species of gargantuan elephant that used to drift across much of Europe and Asia was more close relatedto advanced African woodland elephantsthan woodland elephant are to modern African bush elephant . This new determination tally support to the argument that the two modern types of elephants living in Africa today are actually two freestanding species .
The straight - horn elephant ( Palaeoloxodon antiquus ) was a behemoth of ancient times . accomplish up to 4 meters ( 13 foundation ) tall at the articulatio humeri and matter in at around 15 metric ton ( 16.5 tons ) , the goliath are call back to have live between 1.5 million and 100,000 years ago . But it has long been thought that as the Eurasiatic mammoth was more closely related to to the Asian elephant , the Eurasiatic square - tusk beast would have been , too .
But a newgenetic analysis of fossilsfrom the extinct coinage compare with the living found that the straight - tusked elephants last share a common antecedent with the forest variety some 1.5 to 3.5 million years ago , while the forest elephant ’s last mutual ancestor with the bush elephant was at least 3.9 to 7 million yr ago .
" We ’ve had really unspoilt genetic evidence since the yr 2001 that forest and savanna elephants in Africa are two different specie , but it ’s been very unmanageable to convert conservation agencies that that ’s the case,”saidAlfred Roca , co - writer of the study ineLife . “ With the new genetic evidence fromPalaeoloxodon , it becomes almost inconceivable to argue that the elephants now live in Africa belong to to a single coinage . ”
This latest field of study adds yet more weight to the argument that the African timber elephant is aseparate and clear-cut speciescompared to the big African bush elephant . Scientific grounds has , for a quite a while now , backed up the fact that the syllable structure of the two elephant hold out on the continent appear so different . Yet despite all this evidence , preservation government agency have been slow on the ingestion .
The International Union for the Conservation of Nature ( IUCN)Red List of Threatened Species , for example , still lists the two animals as a exclusive coinage . As the dominance on the condition of how threaten the world ’s fauna are , the fact that they are still considered as one is worryingly damaging for the smaller forest dwelling creatures .
While the easterly and southern populations of African Dubyuh elephant are doing well , and even on the wage hike , the central and westerly species of forest elephant are being decimated . But as they are all considered the same species , the Red List simply lists the African elephant as “ vulnerable ” , a move that is potentially pushing the forest elephants ever closer to extinction .
