0131 - Fossil Skeleton Of Extinct Elephant Found In Northwest China. The fo...Back

Fossil Skeleton Of Extinct Elephant Found In Northwest China. The fossil skeleton of an extinct elephant - - one of the world's biggest and best preserved individual stegedon skeletons so far found - - was recently excavated by Chinese scientists along the bank of Malien River in Hoshui County in northwest China's Kansu Province. Belonging to an old stegedon, the skeleton measures about 4 metres high and 8 metres long. The tusk is 3.03 metres long. This type of elephant lived from the end of the tertiary period three million years ago to the quaternary period 10,000 years ago. Photo: Professor Yang Chung-chien (second from right), Director of the institute of vertebrate paleontology and paleoanthropology under the Chinese Academy of Sciences, and his young colleagues studying the elephant's cranial bones.