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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 ...
African forest elephant (Loxodonta cyclotis) The African forest elephant is the smallest species of elephants. It is native to West Africa and the Congo Basin. It is one of two species of African elephants, the other being the African bush elephant. [13] Its trunk has two finger-like processes and contains about 40–60,000 muscles. [14]
The position of the limbs and leg bones allows an elephant to stand still for extended periods of time without tiring. Elephants are incapable of turning their manus as the ulna and radius of the front legs are secured in pronation. [72] Elephants may also lack the pronator quadratus and pronator teres muscles or have very small ones. [74]
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.
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 ...
The straight-tusked elephant (Palaeoloxodon antiquus) is an extinct species of elephant that inhabited Europe and Western Asia during the Middle and Late Pleistocene.One of the largest known elephant species, mature fully grown bulls on average had a shoulder height of 4 metres (13 ft) and a weight of 13 tonnes (29,000 lb).
Elephantidae is a family of large, herbivorous proboscidean mammals collectively called elephants and mammoths. These are large terrestrial mammals with a snout modified into a trunk and teeth modified into tusks. Most genera and species in the family are extinct. Only two genera, Loxodonta (African elephants) and Elephas (Asian elephants), are ...
Palaeoloxodon namadicus is an extinct species of prehistoric elephant known from the Middle Pleistocene to Late Pleistocene of the Indian subcontinent, and possibly also elsewhere in Asia. The species grew larger than any living elephant, and some authors have suggested it to have been the largest known land mammal based on extrapolation from ...