Elephants are the largest terrestrial animals alive today, not to mention some of the largest from prehistoric periods too - some recently extinct species of Palaeoloxodon may have stood nearly 5m tall, dwarfing woolly mammoths and modern elephants.
However, elephants haven’t always been enormous. 60 million years ago, there lived an unassuming animal known as Eritherium. It looked a lot like a pig, but standing 20cm tall and weighing no more than 5kg, it was more like the kind you’d keep as a pet than the kind you’d farm for bacon.
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- "It could have weighed as much as 10 tonnes, more than double the weight of an African elephant and possibly as much as 14.3 tonnes!"
Eritherium is considered the earliest proboscidean - the scientific name for elephants and their extinct relatives. A number of different, large-bodied lineages evolved from Eritherium, including the large, chin-tusked deinotheres, the strange, long-jawed gomphotheres, and the elephantids - the group that includes Palaeoloxodon, mammoths, and living elephants.
Not all elephants since Eritherium have been massive, though. There are several adorably cute dwarf species that evolved after their large ancestors became trapped on islands and subsequently shrank in size due to a lack of resources. This is an evolutionary process known as ‘island dwarfism’.
Sadly we were unable find an illustration of an Eritherium. The top image is a close up of an elephant's eye. Credit: Selvin / Getty
