Phanagoroloxodon
| Phanagoroloxodon Temporal range:
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| Drawing of the skull in various views | |
Scientific classification 
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| Domain: | Eukaryota |
| Kingdom: | Animalia |
| Phylum: | Chordata |
| Class: | Mammalia |
| Order: | Proboscidea |
| Family: | Elephantidae |
| Genus: | †Phanagoroloxodon Garutt, 1957 |
| Species: | †P. mammontoides
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| Binomial name | |
| †Phanagoroloxodon mammontoides Garutt, 1957
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Phanagoroloxodon is a genus of extinct elephant. It is known from one speciesm Phanagoroloxodon mammontoides, which is described from a partial skull found on the banks of the Psekups river in the northwestern Caucasus of Russia, of probable Late Pliocene-Early Pleistocene age.[1][2] Phanagoroloxodon has been suggested to share a close common ancestry with Elephas (which contains the living Asian elephant), as well as mammoths (genus Mammuthus), combining characteristics of both genera.[2][3] Like the Asian elephant, the top of the skull has a groove running along the midline, while the tusks are suggested to be twisted, similar to those of mammoths.[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.[4] 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).[5] 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. However, these suggestions were rejected by Sanders (2023).[6]
References
[edit]- ^ GARUTT, 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)
- ^ a b c W.E. Garutt. (1995). The phanagorian elephant Phanagoroloxodon mammontoides Garutt, 1957 from the Pliocene of the north-western Caucasus. Cranium, 12(2), 87–92.
- ^ H. Zhang Elephas recki: the wastebasket? 66th Symposium of Vertebrate Palaeontology and Comparative Anatomy, Manchester. (2018)
- ^ Baigusheva, Vera S.; Titov, Vadim V.; Foronova, Irina V. (October 2016). "Teeth of early generations of Early Pleistocene elephants (Mammalia, Elephantidae) from Sinyaya Balka/Bogatyri site (Sea of Azov Region, Russia)". Quaternary International. 420: 306–318. doi:10.1016/j.quaint.2015.08.007.
- ^ Lister, Adrian M.; Stuart, Anthony J. (December 2010). "The West Runton mammoth (Mammuthus trogontherii) and its evolutionary significance". Quaternary International. 228 (1–2): 180–209. Bibcode:2010QuInt.228..180L. doi:10.1016/j.quaint.2010.07.032.
- ^ Sanders, William J. (2023-07-07). Evolution and Fossil Record of African Proboscidea (1 ed.). Boca Raton: CRC Press. pp. 267–293. doi:10.1201/b20016. ISBN 978-1-315-11891-8.
Genera of the order Proboscidea | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
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