Abstract
THE Proboscidea are such very large animals that their fossil bones and teeth attracted attention in the far distant past, but only in 1698 did W. E. Tentzelius prove that giant bones found in a sandpit at Tonna in Thuringia were those of an elephant, and were not "minerale fossile, sed animale petrifactum". Before 1800 Blumenbach and Cuvier showed that some fossil elephant teeth belonged to species and genera no longer living.
Proboscidea
A Monograph, on the Discovery, Evolution, Migration and Extinction of the Mastodonts and Elephants of the World. By Prof. Henry Fairfield Osborn. Mabel Rice Percy. (Published on the J. Pierpont Morgan Fund by the Trustees of the American Museum of Natural History.) Vol. 2: Stegodontoidea, Elephantoidea. Pp. xxvii + 805 - 1176 + 19 plates. (New York: American Museum Press, 1942.) 20 dollars.
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WATSON, D. History of Elephants. Nature 153, 5–7 (1944). https://doi.org/10.1038/153005a0
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/153005a0