Platybelodon
| Platybelodon Temporal range: Miocene
| |
|---|---|
| |
| Skeleton exhibited at Hubei province | |
| Scientific classification | |
| Kingdom: | |
| Phylum: | |
| Class: | |
| Order: | |
| Family: | |
| Genus: | †Platybelodon Borissiak, 1928
|
Platybelodon was an extinct type of four-tusked elephant. It is now placed in the Amebelodontidae, a sister group of the Gomphotheres. These were large herbivores related to modern elephants. They lived in wet forests in Africa, Asia and the Caucasus.
They are commonly known as shovel tuskers. Platybelodon lived during the Miocene, about 15–10 million years ago.[1]
Palaeobiology[change | change source]
Platybelodon was previously believed to have fed in the swampy areas of grassy savannas, using its teeth to shovel up aquatic and semi-aquatic vegetation.
However, wear patterns on the teeth suggest that it used its lower tusks to strip bark from trees. They may have used the sharp incisors that formed the edge of the "shovel" more like a modern-day scythe, grasping branches with its trunk and rubbing them against the lower teeth to cut it from a tree.[2]