The ancestors of modern elephants are woolly mammoths, but if we look further back in prehistory, their ancestors were animals with extremely strange and seemingly “unconventional” appearances.

Deinotherium

Deinotherium, also known as the Elephant Dinosaur, is one of the ancient ancestors of modern elephants.

The Deinotherium looked quite similar to today’s African elephants except for its larger body and its strange-looking inverted tusks.

Image comparing the size of the Deinotherium species compared to today’s African elephant.

In addition, they had a large and relatively short trunk compared to other ancestors of elephants or modern elephants.

According to the size of a skull found in Germany in 1836, we know that these animals far exceeded modern elephants in size with a height of 3.6 – 4.6 m even with giant males that could be up to 5 m tall and weigh up to 12 tons.

The most distinctive feature of Deinotherium was a pair of tusks, but their purpose remains unclear.

Deinotherium was a prehistoric relative of modern elephants, appearing in the Middle Miocene and surviving until the Pleistocene period. From the fossils discovered, paleontologists believe that it had similar behavior to modern elephants and that it had downward-curving fangs attached to its lower jaw.

Platybelodon

Platybelodon, also known as the “shovel-tusked elephant”, lived about 4-15 million years ago, and was distributed in Africa, Europe, Asia and North America.

This is also a herbivore related to today’s modern elephants Platybelodon, Archaeobelodon, Konobelodon and Amebelodon, they are all commonly called “shovel-tusked elephants” because they share the characteristic of a flat, elongated lower jaw along with 2 hard “tusks” that are also flat, forming a shovel-like shape.

The biggest difference between Platybelodon and modern elephants is that it had a shovel-shaped trunk.

It was previously thought that it lived in swampy areas on the savannah and used its teeth to scoop up aquatic and semi-aquatic plants.

However, after careful analysis of fossil specimens, paleontologists believe that it used its quick teeth for cutting while its lower jaw would have been used to strip bark.

It is thought to have lived in the swampy areas of grᴀsslands, using its teeth to dig up aquatic and semi-aquatic vegetation.

Uintatherium

Uintatherium is an extinct mammal whose fossil remains were discovered in Ford Bray Orange, Utah, USA. It was once believed to be restricted to what is now North America, but in the 1980s fossil specimens of the species were found in East Asia.

The male Uintatherium had six horns on its forehead, the function of which remains a mystery, but it is speculated that they were either a defensive weapon or a tool to show strength and attract females during mating season.

This was a large animal that looked almost like a rhinoceros. The most distinctive feature of this species was its unusually large skull – a flat and concave skull – a feature not seen in any other mammal.

Uintatherium lived between 33.9 and 55.8 million years ago. Its diet consisted mainly of leaves, grᴀsses and shrubs.

Arisinoitherium is an extinct, rhinoceros-like herbivore that lived during the late Eocene and early Oligocene of North Africa between 36 and 30 million years ago, in tropical rainforests and the margins of mangrove swamps.

A skeleton of the species Arsinoitherium.

Until now, there is still no exact answer to explain why they have such large horns on their skulls.

Analysis of fossil samples shows that they lived 30 – 36 million years ago with a height of about 1.8m, 3m long, although they look quite similar to rhinos, their leg structure is more similar to elephants and perhaps their gait and running are similar to modern elephants.