The little mammoth ever known to have existed has been confirmed to have lived on the island of Crete — and scientist conceive that it was an adult which had evolve into a gnome metal money of the gargantuan beasts .
A squad of palaeontologists from London’sNatural History Museumsuggest that the adults of this dwarf gigantic species would have grown to the size of a modern baby elephant , standing just over a meter tall at the shoulders .
While the remains were in the beginning detect over a C ago , it ’s always been ill-defined whether the pearl belonged to an elephant or a mammoth . In their report , whichappears in the Royal Society journal Proceedings B , the research worker explain that it was a new analysis of an upper foreleg which enabled them to assess that the creature was in fact an grownup gnome mammoth .
On islands , there ’s an evolutionary advantage to being smaller : it have in mind an creature can get away with consuming fewer resources and still outlast . That means that , over time , it ’s born for a coinage which notice itself on an island to evolve into a nanus form . Victoria Herridge , one of the researchers , explains to the BBC :
“ Dwarfism is a well - screw evolutionary reply of large mammalian to island environments … Our findings show that on Crete , island dwarfism occurred to an utmost arcdegree , producing the smallest mammoth known so far . ”
The research worker speculate that mammoths first found themselves on the island of Crete as early as 3.5 million years ago — and , over time , became rather less mammoth . [ Royal Society journal Proceedings B , BBC ]
Image byEduard Kyslynskyy / Shutterstock
AnimalsBiologyEvolutionMammothScienceSHUTTERSTOCK
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