Ancient 'Monster' Elephant Was 50 Percent Bigger Than Modern Cousins

By Laura Geggel, Senior Writer | August 30, 2017 01:57pm ET

CALGARY, Alberta —  Half a million years ago, the Arabian Peninsula wasn't a sandy desert but rather a lush, wet landscape. There, a gigantic elephant — 50 percent larger than today's biggest elephants — tromped around an ancient lake before dying, a new fossil skeleton reveals.

The behemoth, known as Elephas recki, is an ancient elephant species that existed from about 3.5 million years ago to about 300,000 years ago and lived in parts of Africa and the Middle East, said study lead researcher, Iyad Zalmout, a paleontologist with the Saudi Geological Survey in Jeddah.

Researchers first began uncovering the newfound animal's remains in northwestern Saudi Arabia's Nafud Desert in 2014, but other parts of the same individual were unearthed as recently as this year, and excavation work is ongoing, said study co-researcher Dan Fisher, the director of the Museum of Paleontology at the University of Michigan. [Mammoth Resurrection: 11 Hurdles to Bringing Back an Ice Age Beast]

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Closing the gap: Extreme desert gecko spotted on salt-flats in central Oman

The Gulf Sand gecko is a remarkable desert reptile in that it is the only lizard found habitually on sabkha substrate across large parts of the eastern Arabian Peninsula. These arid salt flats constitute one of the harshest habitats on earth, due to their extraordinary salinity.

The Gulf gecko, Pseudoceramodactylus khobarensis, belongs to a genus with a single species, and it is well adapted to this substrate featuring spiny scales beneath the fingers, long extremities and swollen nostrils.

Data on its distribution range showed a conspicuous gap between eastern United Arab Emirates and coastal Oman, across a distance of more than 450km. Yet previous research had shown that genetic variability was relatively low for this gecko species.

During a recent fieldtrip in Oman, an international team of herpetologists, led by Dr. Salvador Carranza of the Institute of Evolutionary Biology in Barcelona, visited this area, almost devoid of vegetation аs well as access roads and tracks, and was able to spot for the first time specimens of this exceptional gecko in inland Oman. These localities, situated almost 250 km, east and west, from previously recorded occurrences fill in the distributional gap for this species and help to better understand the genetic and morphological variability patterns observed. The study was published in the open access journal Biodiversity Data Journal.

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