aquatic elephants
Alex Duncan (aduncan@mail.utexas.edu)
30 Oct 1995 14:29:42 GMT
Hubey sez:
>>That's amazing. Maybe the trunk served another purpose at one time,
>>a snorkel ??
Brochu sez:
>Doubtful. As far as we can tell, the last semiaquatic proboscideans had
>little or no trunk. This is because the structure of the naris in taxa
>like Moerotherium suggests something much more conventional.
>
>The last semiaquatic proboscideans, by the way, were late Eocene or
>Oligocene.
I think for the AAHer's benefit we should point out that the semiaquatic
proboscideans of the Paleogene are distantly related sister taxa to
modern elephants, and can not be construed to represent an ancestral
condition for modern taxa.
Alex Duncan
Dept. of Anthropology
University of Texas at Austin
Austin, TX 78712-1086
512-471-4206
aduncan@mail.utexas.edu
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