5.5-Million-Year-Old Elephant Burial with Complete Skeletons of Gomphotheres Discovered in Florida

Paleontologists have discovered a 5.5-million-year-old elephant burial in Florida, according to June 1 press reports.

The tomb is littered with bones belonging to gomphotheres, an extinct ancestor of the modern elephant.

Paleontologists have discovered the complete skeletons of at least one adult and seven young gomphotheres. The adult measures 2.4 meters, while the head and tusks measure 2.7 meters.

“Not only were the bones much larger than any other individual we’ve seen, but they were really in place as if the animal had just laid down and died,” said Jonathan Bloch, curator of vertebrate paleontology in Florida. Museum of Natural History, according to Livescience.com.

How were the remains found?

Excavation efforts began in 2022 after a volunteer located a particularly large gomphothere bone at the Gainesville site. The archaeological site has already been fruitful in previous excavations.

“I started cutting the toe and ankle bones one by one,” Dean Warner, the volunteer who found the bone, said in a statement. As I continued digging, it turned out to be the ulna and radius. [long arm bones] It started to unravel.”

“It was really exciting because it gave us the opportunity not only to see what adults could do [gomphothere] “It would have looked like this,” Bloch said, “but also to document each bone in its structure very carefully.” “That’s exciting from a scientific point of view if you’re trying to understand the anatomy of these animals and something about their biology and evolution.”

While the bodies were close together, scientists believe they died hundreds of years apart. Researchers believe that an adult drowned at the site, while children died in other locations and the bodies were carried away by the water.