Palaeoloxodon naumanni, like other members of the genus Palaeoloxodon, is more closely related to African elephants than Asian elephants and Mammoths. Similar to mammoths P. naumanni had a subcutaneous fat layer and long fur as an adaption to a cold environment. The species had a pair of long twisted tusks and a bulge on the head. These tusks grew more than 2.4 m in length, 20 cm in diameter. It was a little smaller than Asian elephants averaging to. It lived in forest which mixed subarctic conifers and cool-temperate deciduous trees. The ancestor of Palaeoloxodon naumanni moved from the Eurasian continent to Japan via a land bridge; it subsequently evolved independently and spread throughout Japan after the land bridge was covered by rising seawaters. Palaeoloxodon naumanni was hunted by the inhabitants of the time. Some fossils were found around Lake Nojiri in Nagano Prefecture, together with many lithic and bone tool artifacts. The range of P. naumanni extends across the Japanese archipelago, north to Hokkaido, where during the Late Pleistocene it alternated with the woolly mammoth during warmer intervals.
Discovery and nomenclature
In 1860, the first fossil record was found at Yokosuka and the bottom of Seto Inland Sea, Japan. Heinrich Edmund Naumann researched and reported these fossils in “Ueber japanische Elephanten der Vorzeit”. Naumann classified the fossil as Elephas namadicus Falconer & Cautley. In 1924, researched fossils which were found in Hamamatsu, Shizuoka and reported the elephant was a new subspecies and deseignated the fossil Elephas namadicus naumannni in “Notes on a fossil elephant from Sahamma, Totomi”. Tadao Kamei identified Elephas namadicus naumanni as a new species, called Palaeoloxodon naumanni, from fossils found at Lake Nojiri. It has also been called Elephas naumanni.
Evolution and extinction
The oldest known dates for the species are from MIS 12, around 430 kya, where it replaces Stegodon orientalis, which had arrived from mainland East Asia several hundred thousand years prior. The youngest dates for the species are around 24 kyr Before Present, during the early stages of the Last Glacial Maximum. Any younger dates were considered unreliable.
