The Proboscidea of the Past

[epaiva]

Clash of the Titans
The find consisted of two massive bull-mammoth skulls with their tusks locked together, each mammoth had one full tusk and one broken tusk. This asymmetry msy explsin how the two came to be locked together. With elephants with two complete tusks fight they are kept at a distance by the curve of theirs tusks and the bulk of their trunk. Adversaries with broken tusks have no such buffer and can get much closer to each other, using the good tusk like a spear for stabbing.
Around 12.000 years ago this is exactly what must have happened when the two mammoths squared off against each other. As they pushed and shoved one mommoth punched a hole through the shoulder blade of his opponent, probably using his broken tusk. As the fight continued, the tusk somehow became irreversibly interlocked. The animals no doubt struggled in this state to the point of exhaustion, when they collapsed, dragging each other down.
Locked in a fatal embrace, they eventually died.
Book Prehistoric America - A journey through the Ice Age and Beyond (Miles Barton, Nigel Bean, Stephen Duanleavy, Ian Gray, Adam White

*This image is copyright of its original author

*This image is copyright of its original author

Reply