It was reported in February 2020 that researchers found a premolar tooth of about 6 cm width and 7 cm length at Kutch, Gujarat which belonged to an extinct ancient elephant called Deinotherium indicum. The finding increases our understanding of the variations in dental morphology of the South Asian Deinotheres species. Interestingly, this was the region’s first occurrence of the mammal, which weighed between 8 and 10 tonnes.
Key Takeaways of the Report
Some of the key takeaways of the report are as follows:
(i) As per the first author of the study, published in the Journal of Paleontology, Department of Geology at Panjab University, Dr Ningthoujam Premjit Singh this new find expands the distribution range of this species, hitherto only known from two or three localities—Tapar of Gujarat, Haritalyangar in Himachal Pradesh, and Piram Island, off the coast of Gujarat.
(ii) Deinotherium indicum lived roughly between 11 and 7 seven million years ago in India. It was confirmed by using a technique called biostratigraphy. In this technique, the presence of certain species from a known time-period can be used to estimate the age of a deposit containing the same species in a different locality.
(iii) Date for this find is based on the similarity in species found in well-dated Siwalik deposits from Haritalyangar of Himachal Pradesh. Definite dates can only be procured when paleomagnetic and radiometric studies are performed on the rocks that these fossils came from.
(iv) Though they had similar large bodies with columnlike limbs, their heads were very different. They had flatter skulls, and a set of downwards pointing, curved tusks only on the lower jaw.
(v) Analyses of their skulls have shown that they probably also had a short, slightly bulbous trunk. If you looked inside their mouths, all of their teeth would have erupted and were used in chewing at the same time.
(vi) As per Dr Advait M. Jukar, the Department of Paleobiology, National Museum of Natural History, Smithsonian Institution and the co-first author and corresponding author of the paper, modern elephants have only one tooth in use, on each side of their jaw.
(vii) This species was a fairly distant relative of today’s elephants. The family deinotheriidae, including D. indicum, was first found in the fossil record approximately 28 million years old in Africa. As for the modern elephants, they do not appear until about eight million years ago.
Future Mission
The team plans to continue their studies in the Tapar beds of Kutch, which is expected to have many more fossils. Now, the plan is to keep describing different species until a solid understanding of the diversity of vertebrates from western India is reached. A dataset of species occurrences through time in western India is to be set up to compare the trends in diversity seen there with those seen in the well-studied fossil record from the Siwaliks.