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Mini Mammoth Once Roamed Crete
ananyo writes "Scientists can now add a 'dwarf mammoth' to the list of biological oxymorons that includes the jumbo shrimp and pygmy whale. Studies of fossils discovered last year on the island of Crete in the Mediterranean Sea reveal that an extinct species once thought to be a diminutive elephant was actually the smallest mammoth known to have existed — which, as an adult, stood no taller than a modern newborn elephant (abstract). The species is the most extreme example of insular dwarfism yet found in mammoths."
Why couldn't they have recreated a herd of these guys instead of raptors?
Think 'Petting Zoo' instead of 'dying a horrible death'
[Fuck Beta]
o0t!
If only that had been mentioned in the summary!
Slightly disreputable, albeit gregarious
I thought this has been known for a while, and is the origin of the myth of the cyclops?
The fossil specimens aren't newly discovered; but there was apparently some phylogenetic wrangling about whether they were mammoths or elephants and there weren't enough specimens to get a good size estimate.
The present discovery is that the remains show distinctively mammoth characteristics and that there are enough of them to infer size.
For those who may not be familiar with Girl Genius:
Mimmoths are tiny verminous mammoths. Originally somebody’s experiment, they escaped and quickly populated most of Europe. They fill the same niche as mice and tend to live alongside them. They get into machinery and push things around with their tusks, wreaking havoc.
Check out Wilma Flintstone's vacuum cleaner.
Or perhaps Bedrock was located on Crete?
Slightly disreputable, albeit gregarious
Exactly, although I'd have to take exception to pygmy whale being described as an oxymoron. Although whales are generally very large the word 'whale' doesn't mean 'large'.
IMO even jumbo shrimp is debatable, shrimp has come to mean small/diminutive but that is derived from the name of the creature and doesn't mean small in and of itself*, where as mammoth actually meant large before it was applied to an animal.
* I'm actually guessing on that one, if I'm wrong I'm sure someone will correct me.
OK, I'll play pedant with you.
The word "mammoth" does not come from any word for "large". It comes from the name "earth horn" in Mansi (so says Wikipedia). The fact that we now use the word "mammoth" to mean "large" is by analogy with the animal. As in "that's one elephant-sized headache I've got today".
Mammoths aren't actually any larger than regular African Elephants (which admittedly is pretty darned large).