Deinotherium giganteum
He feels tired of being called an elephant.
The gigantic deinothere, a lanky, unfamiliar titan travelling to and fro the open woodlands of Neogene Eurasia. Standing up to four metres high at the withers, it uses the strange, hoe-shaped tusks on its chin to strip obstructing bark and branches from trees, while its broad proboscis withdraws the leaves into its mouth. Not in our day does something quite like it exist anymore, and only barely does it relate to its closest modern cousins, the distant, much noisier elephants. None of today’s terrestrial animals, even the African bush elephant, come close to its sheer stature. It would be an odd, yet majestic sight for any time traveller indeed.
The traditional reconstruction of Deinotherium is that of a monotonous "weird elephant" with "upside down" tusks, wrinkly grey skin, a discernible trunk, floppy ears, and horrid trumpeting vocalisations.
RAAAAAAAAAAA! From Walking With Beasts.
Despite elephants being the closest living relatives of it however, it was no elephant itself, far from one. The Proboscidea was never an elephant-centric "family" of "early elephants," but a whole grand order of diverse forms just like the Artiodactyla, Carnivora and many others. Elephants are just the only ones on the planet left, thanks to the mysterious extinction of megafauna in the Late Pleistocene epoch. Deinotheriids were among the more ancient lineages of proboscidean, in fact, pretty much only being as related to elephants as camels are to cattle, so who’s to say they weren’t more different in life from elephants than we imagine? Here, I’ve reconstructed Deinotherium giganteum as an un-elephantine animal, with stripes and a countershaded skin pattern to help break its outline in woodlands, though it is quite subtle thanks to its protective size. It also resembles a huge, weird horse or tapir to me. Speaking of tapirs, you can see a compact, tapir-like proboscis where an elephantine trunk is often restored, though that is still highly debated. As said before, deinotheriids were quite basal proboscideans, way back in the phylogenetic tree where a "trunk" would’ve been less developed. Osteological correlates in the nares of the skull also suggest this kind of structure, not only short, but also broad from the base along the underside, more developed around the lip and jaw region than the nasal region. I also think a shorter trunk would be less obstructive as it closely browsed the trees, removing branches with its downward tusks. The problem discussed with a proboscis however is that it might hinder it from drinking efficiently, being such a tall animal with a small head. I agree with Liam Elward’s (with another great Deinotherium) opinion though that it could’ve either spread its forelimbs out like a giraffe, or waded into the water like a moose. Both are simple and plausible hypotheses that wouldn’t put exhaust on the animal. Markov et al. have some detailed papers on deinothere feeding and facial morphology with great reasons, though I don’t think they cover the drinking issue. So, don’t call Mr. Giganteum an elephant, or a dugong or whatever please, because he’s something of his own.
