New fossil remains of Elephas from the southern Levant: implications for the evolutionary history of the Asian elephant

Authors

Adrian M. Lister, Natural History Museum, London
Wendy Dirks, Newcastle University, UK
Amnon Assaf, Prehistoric Man Museum
Michael Chazan, University of Toronto
Paul Goldberg, Boston UniversityFollow
Yaakov H. Applbaum, Hadassah-Hebrew University Medical Cente
Nathalie Greenbaum, Hadassah-Hebrew University Medical Cente
Liora Kolska Horwitz, Hebrew University of Jerusalem

RIS ID

102434

Publication Details

Lister, A. M., Dirks, W., Assaf, A., Chazan, M., Goldberg, P., Applbaum, Y. H., Greenbaum, N. & Horwitz, L. Kolska. (2013). New fossil remains of Elephas from the southern Levant: implications for the evolutionary history of the Asian elephant. Palaeogeography, Palaeoclimatology, Palaeoecology, 386 119-130.

Abstract

We describe new fossil remains of elephant (Elephas cf. hysudricus) from archaeological sites in the Levant: Ma'ayan Baruch (Israel) and 'Ain Soda (Jordan). Both sites date to the Middle Pleistocene based on stone artefacts typical of Levantine Late Acheulian assemblages. The elephant remains show 'primitive' dental features reminiscent of E. hysudricus from the Plio-Pleistocene of the Siwaliks (northern India), the species thought to be ancestral to Asian elephant E. maximus. Regionally, the new fossils are chronologically intermediate between an earlier (ca. 1 Ma) record of Elephas sp. from Evron Quarry (Israel), and Holocene remains of E. maximus from archaeological sites in NW Syria, Turkey, Iraq and Iran. It is unclear at present whether this represents continuity of occupation or, more plausibly, independent westward expansions.