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About 10 million years ago, Platybelodon, this delightfully ridiculous ancestor of the elephant, roamed Africa, Asia, Europe & North America. https://www.wired.com/2013/10/absurd-creature-of-the-week-spork-elephant/ #Art by Tomasz Jedrzejowski #science
Platybelodon. Artist: Tomasz Jedrzejowski

Absurd Creature of the Week: This Prehistoric Elephant Had a Huge Spork for a Mouth

Platybelodon was an ancestor of the modern elephant that looked like it got hit in the face with a shovel, then absorbed that shovel into its mouth.
Matt Simon (WIRED)
#art #science
morph
morph  
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They deserve to have a software named after them.
Barry Goldman
Barry Goldman  
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that's a very platy set of belows it has too!
Madagascar_Sky
Madagascar_Sky  
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paleontologist William Sanders of the University of Michigan wrote in an email to WIRED. “But recent analysis of tusk wear surfaces show that they were used more as scythes to cut tough vegetation.”

WHAT

mattmaison
mattmaison  
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If it wasn't you that had posted this I would have sworn this was a prank...
Badger AF
Badger AF  
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"OK, AI - draw a picture of the offspring and an upside-down beaver..."
Earthling
Earthling  
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Elypus? Platyphant?
Steve Torrente
Steve Torrente  
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I want to believe - but if these had ever really existed, wouldn't there already be an open source software project named after them?
Jim
Jim  
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the article suggests they most likely did not look like that, thankfully. Those cartoon like jaws couldn’t work. As the article says, trunks are separate to mouths. There’s a model of one, later in the article, that seems to be closer to what current archaeologists believe they looked like. Still weird though. The problem for archaeologists is, trunks don’t fossilise as well as jaw bones.
Lynda Delph
Lynda Delph  
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Gomphotheres for the win!
Toastie
Toastie  
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Can't explain it but this looks like a picture of the mansplaining stratum of Mastodon
Susan Lewis
Susan Lewis  
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The fact that I found out about this on Mastodon is rather fitting.
Indra Raj Pathak
Indra Raj Pathak  
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Elephants have deeper roots in the history of evolution.
Robaque
Robaque  
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why does only the baby platybelodon have nostrils?

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