While they may be the largest animals to currently walk the Earth, elephants haven’t always been giants. In fact, during the Ice Age there were several species that, even when fully grown, stood no higher than an adult human’s waist...
What is the smallest elephant that ever lived?
The smallest species of elephant ever discovered is Palaeoloxodon falconeri - a dwarf elephant that, as a calf, was no bigger than a housecat and, as an adult, rarely exceeded 1m in height. One of the cutest prehistoric animals ever, this miniature elephant lived on the Mediterranean islands of Sicily and Malta during the Middle Pleistocene, roughly 500,000 to 200,000 years ago.
Are dwarf elephants related to other elephants?
Remarkably for something so small, Palaeoloxodon falconeri’s closest relative - the straight-tusked elephant, or Palaeoloxodon antiquus - was a giant. Standing ~4m at the shoulder, the straight-tusked elephant would have towered over the largest species of elephant alive today, the 3.2m-tall African elephant.
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It’s thought Palaeoloxodon falconeri descended from a group of these straight-tusked elephants that became trapped on Sicily and Malta as sea levels in the Mediterranean rose and isolated them from the mainland - but more on that later.
What did these dwarf elephants look like?
At first glance, Palaeoloxodon falconeri looked just like your typical elephant with all of the iconic features, such as a pair of tusks, a flexible trunk, a barrel-shaped body, and four pillar-like legs. However, unlike today’s elephants, it’s thought this dwarf species may have been covered in a layer of fuzzy hair. Typically, smaller body sizes result in increased heat loss so to maintain stable temperatures as they transformed from giants to dwarfs, researchers think Palaeoloxodon falconeri may have evolved denser coats of hair.
Where did these dwarf elephants live?
The dwarf elephants that lived on Sicily and Malta weren’t the only dwarf elephants in the Mediterranean during the Pleistocene Period; the islands of Sardinia, Favignana, Crete, Rhodes, Kasos, and Cyprus were also home to some of their own endemic species, including several miniature mammoths. While Palaeoloxodon falconeri was the smallest, Cyprus’ Palaeoloxodon cypriotes didn’t grow much larger and also stood at an average height of ~1m.
Why were the Mediterranean’s elephants so small?
As mentioned above, it’s widely believed that the dwarf elephants that inhabited islands across the Mediterranean during the Pleistocene Period evolved from larger species that once lived on the mainland of Eurasia.
To explain how they shrunk, researchers often point to the evolutionary phenomenon known as island dwarfism. This is a process whereby typically large animals, such as elephants, become trapped on islands and, in response to limited resources in their new environment, start to decrease in size. There are other factors that contribute towards this shrinking too, like a lack of predators - unlike those on the mainland, elephants that lived in the Mediterranean during the Pleistocene Period no longer had to bulk up in an effort to deter deadly prehistoric cats like hungry cave lions and sabre-tooth tigers.
This process also works the other way, driving typically small animals towards gigantism. As well as being home to a species of dwarf elephant, Sicily and Malta were also home to a very large species of swan, Cygnus falconeri.
This giant swan stood half-a-metre taller than the dwarf elephants it lived alongside and may have even competed with them for food. Another giant that lived on Sicily and Malta during this time was the enormous dormouse known as Leithia. This rodent was ten times the size of a modern dormouse and more comparable in size to a cat or a large rabbit.
How did elephants migrate to islands in the Mediterranean?
Throughout the Pleistocene Period, sea levels in the Mediterranean fluctuated as ice sheets across the northern hemisphere waxed and waned during cold glacial periods and warm interglacial periods. To put it simply: during cold glacial periods, when more water was locked up in ice sheets, sea levels were low - and vice versa during warm interglacial periods.
It’s thought that, during these cold glacial periods, chains of now-submerged islands were exposed across the Mediterranean. These island chains would have allowed many mainland animals, including elephants and mammoths, to walk over to islands such as Sicily, Malta, Sardinia, and Cyprus. However, as sea levels rose during warm interglacial periods, these animals would have found themselves stranded.
From studies of sea levels in the Mediterranean, as well as migrations of elephants from the mainland, it’s hypothesised that Siciliy, at least, was colonised by two distinct waves of migrating elephants. The first is thought to have resulted in the evolution of Palaeoloxodon falconeri, the smallest dwarf elephant, while the second is thought to have replaced this miniature species with the slightly larger but still small Palaeoloxodon mnaidriensis.
When and why did dwarf elephants become extinct?
Not all of the Mediterranean’s dwarf elephants faced extinction at the same time. For example, the smallest - Palaeoloxodon falconeri - was one of the first to disappear, some 200,000 years ago. This was most likely due to tectonic uplift around Sicily resulting in a reconnection of the island to the mainland, which allowed a number of large mammals to colonise the island, including apex predators such as cave hyenas, cave lions, and brown bears. The straight-tusked elephant is also thought to have re-colonised the island during this time.
Other species of dwarf elephants lasted a lot longer than Palaeoloxodon falconeri. Further east, in Cyprus, Palaeoloxodon cypriotes survived until as recently as 12,000 years ago, making it one of the latest surviving dwarf elephants and, potentially, the only one to have encountered humans.
So far, there’s no evidence to suggest that humans are to blame for its extinction. Instead, it’s more likely that Palaeoloxodon cypriotes ultimately succumbed to the ecological pressures associated with island living, just as other species of dwarf elephants did.