''Gomphotherium'' (; "welded beast") is an extinct genus of proboscids from the Neogene and early

Pleistocene The Pleistocene ( , often referred to as the ''Ice age'') is the geological epoch that lasted from about 2,580,000 to 11,700 years ago, spanning the Earth's most recent period of repeated glaciations. Before a change was finally confirmed in ...

of Eurasia, Africa, North America and Asia. As of 2021, two species, ''G. annectens'' and possibly ''G. subtapiroideum'', are also known from

North Korea North Korea, officially the Democratic People's Republic of Korea (DPRK), is a country in East Asia. It constitutes the northern half of the Korean Peninsula and shares borders with China and Russia to the north, at the Yalu (Amnok) and T ...

Description

Most species of ''Gomphotherium'' were similar in size to the

Asian elephant The Asian elephant (''Elephas maximus''), also known as the Asiatic elephant, is the only living species of the genus ''Elephas'' and is distributed throughout the Indian subcontinent and Southeast Asia, from India in the west, Nepal in the no ...

, with ''G. productum'' (known from a 35-year-old male) measuring tall and weighing . The largest species ''G. steinheimense'', known from a complete 37-year-old male found in Mühldorf, Germany, measured up to tall and weighed . It had four

tusk Tusks are elongated, continuously growing front teeth that protrude well beyond the mouth of certain mammal species. They are most commonly canine teeth, as with pigs and walruses, or, in the case of elephants, elongated incisors. Tusks share ...

s, two on the upper

jaw The jaw is any opposable articulated structure at the entrance of the mouth, typically used for grasping and manipulating food. The term ''jaws'' is also broadly applied to the whole of the structures constituting the vault of the mouth and serv ...

and two on the elongated lower jaw. The lower tusks are parallel and shaped like a

shovel A shovel is a tool used for digging, lifting, and moving bulk materials, such as soil, coal, gravel, snow, sand, or ore. Most shovels are hand tools consisting of a broad blade fixed to a medium-length handle. Shovel blades are usually made o ...

and were probably used for digging up food from mud. Unlike modern elephants, the upper tusks were covered by a layer of enamel. Compared to elephants, the

skull The skull is a bone protective cavity for the brain. The skull is composed of four types of bone i.e., cranial bones, facial bones, ear ossicles and hyoid bone. However two parts are more prominent: the cranium and the mandible. In humans, th ...

was more elongated and low, indicating that the animal had a short trunk with poor flexibility. These animals probably lived in swamps or near lakes, using their tusks to dig or scrape up aquatic vegetation. In comparison to earlier proboscideans, ''Gomphotherium'' had far fewer

molars The molars or molar teeth are large, flat teeth at the back of the mouth. They are more developed in mammals. They are used primarily to grind food during chewing. The name ''molar'' derives from Latin, ''molaris dens'', meaning "millstone to ...

; the remaining ones had high ridges to expand their grinding surfaces. ''Gomphotherium'' spp. inhabited dry wooded regions near lakes.

Taxonomy

The following

cladogram A cladogram (from Greek ''clados'' "branch" and ''gramma'' "character") is a diagram used in cladistics to show relations among organisms. A cladogram is not, however, an evolutionary tree because it does not show how ancestors are related to ...

shows the placement of the genus ''Gomphotherium'' among other proboscideans, based on

hyoid The hyoid bone (lingual bone or tongue-bone) () is a horseshoe-shaped bone situated in the anterior midline of the neck between the chin and the thyroid cartilage. At rest, it lies between the base of the mandible and the third cervical vertebra. ...

characteristics: Gomphotherium NT small.jpg, ''Gomphotherium angustidens'' Gomphotherium productum 3.JPG, ''Gomphotherium productum'' Knight Gomphotherium.jpg, ''G. angustidens'' by Charles R. Knight Gomphotherium angustidens 2.jpg, ''G. angustidens'' skeleton Gomphotherium skeletals.png, Skeletal restoration of ''G. productum'' (right) and ''G. steinheimense'' (left)

References

{{Taxonbar, from=Q132604 Cenozoic mammals of Europe Gomphotheres Miocene proboscideans Pliocene proboscideans Zanclean extinctions Cenozoic mammals of North America White River Fauna Prehistoric placental genera Fossil taxa described in 1837