This Enormous Ancient Elephant Weighed as Much as a Blue Whale

Present-day elephants are the biggest land animals. The African bush elephant (Loxodonta africana) weighs over 10 tons and is up to 13 feet tall. Their Asian relatives, Elephas maximus, rank next on the list of the planet’s heaviest creatures, with a 10-ton mass and eight-foot height. However, like all animals, these massive beasts are dwarfs compared to the huge elephants that lived in prehistoric times.

One of the giants of the geologic record is the Palaeloxodon namadicus. Beyond the noticeable size difference, this massive elephant looked similar to modern elephants and other land mammoths. However, it had several distinct features, making it remarkably different from current-day elephants.