Elephant fossil unearthed in SW China

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 ◆ Elephant fossil unearthed in SW China

Archeologists in southwest China's Yunnan Province have recently unearthed a fossilized skeleton of an elephant believed to have lived two million years ago.

"Except for minor damage to its backbone, the skeleton is almost complete, with a skull, a jawbone and four limbs," said Ji Xueping, a research fellow with the provincial archeological institute.

Because of its 2.4-meter-long tusk and the number of ridges on the teeth in its lower jaw, Ji said the animal was a middle-aged xiphoid-toothed elephant, or a stegodon, in zoological terms.

The fossilized remains were found four meters underground in a small town close to Binchuan County.

Workers from a local factory were about to grind the fossils into bone meal when their supervisor Peng Yagang realized the huge size of fossilized bones could mean something unusual, and reported the find to the local culture heritage department.

The fossils were confirmed to be rare and extremely valuable, as most prehistoric skeletons have disintegrated in the warm and humid weather in the long course of history.

Experts are trying to reassemble the skeleton for further research.

Yunnan is one of the places where some of the world's earliest elephants originated. The discovery of the skeleton is expected to provide new clues as to the origin and evolution of the stegodon, climatic changes in the region and the possible settlement of the region by early man.