Phanagoroloxodon is a genus of extinct elephant. It is known from one species, Phanagoroloxodon mammontoides, which is described from a partial skull from Russia, of probable Late Pliocene-Early Pleistocene age.[1][2]
History of discovery
The holotype of Phanagoroloxodon was found on the banks of the Psekups river in the northwestern Caucasus of Russia, and was given to the Krasnodar State Historical and Archaeological Memorial Museum-Reserve by I.N. Chistyakov in 1885.[2] It was found in the museum's collections by Wadim E. Garutt in 1957, and was named in that same year.[1][2] Other possible remains of the species include molar teeth described from the nearby Sinyaya Balka site near the eastern shore of the Sea of Azov.[3] In 2005, a second species Phanagoroloxodon irtyshensis was described based on a skull found near Pavlodar in Kazakhstan, but this may represent a specimen of the steppe mammoth (Mammuthus trogontherii).[4]
Description
Skull on display
Phanagoroloxodon resembles Elephas (which contains the living Asian elephant) and mammoths (genus Mammuthus) in many regards. Like Elephas, the top of the skull has a saddle-like groove running along the midline and the nasal process is rounded. On the other hand, the molars have occiput is almost devoid of tubercles, the hind molars lack obliteration figures, the tusks are suggested to be twisted, similar to those of mammoths.[2]
Taxonomy
Phanagoroloxodon has been suggested to be more closely related to Elephas and Mammuthus than to Loxodonta (which contains the living African elephants) due to it combining characteristics of both of these genera, with Garutt proposing that it could be ancestral to both Elephas and Mammuthus.[2][5] It was assigned to a tribe of its own, Phanagorodontini by Garutt in 1991.[6] A 2020 PhD thesis by Steven Zhang suggested that Elephas recki brumpti from the Pliocene of East Africa should be subsumed into the species Elephas planifrons, known from the Late Pliocene-Early Pleistocene of the Indian subcontinent, and that this species should be placed as a second species of Phanagoroloxodon.[5] However, these suggestions were rejected by Sanders (2023).[7]
Recontruction of Phanagoroloxodon
References
^ abGARUTT, W.E., 1957. On a new fossil elephant Phanagoroloxodon mammontoides gen. et sp. nov. from the Caucasus. Reports of the Academy of Sciences of the USSR, 112,2: 333-335. (In Russian)
^Garrutt, Wadim E. (1991). "The Phanagorian elephant Phanagoroloxodon mammontoides Garutt, 1957, and the problem of evolutionary ways in the subfamily Elephantinae". The Sixth Coordination Conference for the Study of Mammoths and Mammoth Fauna. Theses of Reports. The Zoological Institute of the Academy of Sciences of the USSR.: 23.
