The Proboscidea of the Past

[epaiva]

cuvieronius hyodon
Cuvieronius is an extinct New World genus of gomphothere and is named after the French naturalist Georges Cuvier. Alive, species stood, on average, about 2.3 metres (7.5 ft) tall at the shoulder, weighed about 3.5 tonnes (3.4 long tons; 3.9 short tons) and would have superficially resembled modern elephants with spiral-shaped tusks.
According to a group of Brazilian mammalogists, many sites in South America referred to Cuvieronius actually refer to Notiomastodon with many previous studies simply labeling fossils one or the other depending on location, with only localities definitely identified as Cuvieronius, the range now extends in the high Andes from Ecuador in the North, to Bolivia in the south, with the localities in the southern Andes in Chile and Argentina now thought to belong to Notiomastodon. The same group attains no confirmed fossils of Cuvieronius exist beyond 44,000 years ago in South America, so the species would not have been in South America at the time of human arrival. By the end of the Pleistocene, the northern limit of the range of Cuvieronius was in Mexico.

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*This image is copyright of its original author

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