Fossils of ancient elephants found in Yunnan
By admin on 2014-12-22

Fossils of ancient elephants were found in Shuitangba community, in Taiping Village, Zhaoyang District, in Zhaotong City, Yunnan Province recently when local farmers were digging for coal. Archeologists say this is the largest site of fossils of ancient elephants in South China.

In the Zhaotong Basin of Yunnan where the fossil was found, over 10 new types of fossils of ancient elephants have been unearthed since the 1950s. Archeologists estimate that the fossil discovered in Shuitangba community lived 3 million to 7 million years ago. The restored fossils can form three skeletons of the ancient elephants, one of which has a tusk 2.6 meters long and weighed 150 kilograms.

According to Jiang Nina, an archaeologist from the University of Pennsylvania who participated in the excavation, the Zhaotong Basin was a swamp filled with water birds, lizards, tortoises and elephants millions of years ago, where old animals died and new ones came into being.

Moreover, Asia's earliest primate tooth was also discovered at the site. Fossils of ancient apes living 3 million to 7 million years ago will be a significant contribution into the research on the origin of humans.