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The African bush elephant (foreground), Earth's largest extant land animal, and the Masai ostrich (background), one of Earth's largest extant birds. In zoology, megafauna (from Greek μέγας megas "large" and Neo-Latin fauna "animal life") are large animals. The precise definition of the term varies widely, though a common threshold is ...
The elephant Palaeoloxodon namadicus has been suggested to have been the largest land mammal ever, based on a particularly large partial femur which was estimated to have belonged to an individual 22 t (24.3 short tons) in weight and about 5.2 m (17.1 ft) tall at the shoulder, though the author of the estimate said that this was speculative and ...
The shape and structure of these leads to the popular name "elephant-nosed fish" for those species with particularly prominent mouth extensions. The extensions to the mouthparts usually consist of a fleshy elongation attached to the lower jaw. They are flexible, and equipped with touch, and possibly taste, sensors.
As part of the Late Pleistocene megafauna extinctions, 80% of megaherbivore species became extinct, with megaherbivores becoming entirely extinct in Europe, Australia and the Americas. Recent megaherbivores include elephants, rhinos, hippos, and giraffes. There are nine extant species of terrestrial megaherbivores living in Africa and Asia.
Elephants belong to the family Elephantidae, the sole remaining family within the order Proboscidea. Their closest extant relatives are the sirenians (dugongs and manatees) and the hyraxes, with which they share the clade Paenungulata within the superorder Afrotheria. [6] Elephants and sirenians are further grouped in the clade Tethytheria. [7]
In zoology, megafauna (from Greek μέγας megas "large" and Neo-Latin fauna "animal life") are large animals. The most common thresholds to be a megafauna are weighing over 46 kilograms (100 lb) [ 2 ] [ 3 ] [ 4 ] (i.e., having a mass comparable to or larger than a human ) or weighing over a tonne , 1,000 kilograms (2,205 lb) [ 2 ] [ 5 ] [ 6 ...
The extinction of the megafauna has been argued by some authors to be disappearance of the mammoth steppe rather than the other way around. Alaska now has low nutrient soil unable to support bison, mammoths, and horses. R. Dale Guthrie has claimed this as a cause of the extinction of the megafauna there; however, he may be interpreting it ...
African forest elephant (Loxodonta cyclotis) The African forest elephant is the smallest species of elephant and is one of two species of African elephants, the other being the African bush elephant. It is native to West Africa and the Congo Basin. [13] Its trunk has two finger-like processes and contains about 40–60,000 muscles. [14]