First true elephants
- Who
- Primelephas gomphotheroides and P. korot
- What
- First
- Where
- Africa
- When
- 02 December 2014
The first true elephants were Primelephas gomphotheroides and P. korotorensis, which lived during the Miocene and Pliocene epochs in Africa. They are believed to have given rise not only to today's African and Asian elephants but also to the now-extinct woolly mammoth.
Primelephas translates as 'first elephant', and this generic name was coined in 1970 following the discovery of the first P. gomphotheroides remains. Unusually for elephants, the Primelephas species possessed four tusks instead of two.