Platybelodon
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Platybelodon Temporal range: Miocene, 15–10 Ma |
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| Skeleton exhibited at Hubei province | |
| Scientific classification | |
| Kingdom: | Animalia |
| Phylum: | Chordata |
| Class: | Mammalia |
| Order: | Proboscidea |
| Family: | †Amebelodontidae |
| Subfamily: | †Platybelodontinae |
| Genus: |
†Platybelodon Borissiak, 1928 |
| Species | |
Platybelodon ("flat-spear tusk") was a genus of large herbivorous mammal related to the elephant (order Proboscidea). It lived during the late Miocene Epoch in Asia and the Caucasus. and its fossils are very common.
Platybelodon was now to believed to have a wide range across Eurasia due to many various related fossils found and these fossils, belongs into this genus.
Platybelodon was very similar to Amebelodon, another, closely related gomphothere genus. Due to the shape of the two lower teeth, in common with many gomphothere genera (such as Platybelodon, Archaeobelodon, Konobelodon, and Amebelodon), they are popularly known as "shovel tuskers."
Platybelodon was previously believed to have fed in the swampy areas of grassy savannas, using its teeth to shovel up aquatic and semi-aquatic vegetation. However, wear patterns on the teeth suggest that it used its lower tusks to strip bark from trees, and may have used the sharp incisors that formed the edge of the "shovel" more like a modern-day scythe, grasping branches with its trunk and rubbing them against the lower teeth to cut it from a tree. Adult animals in particular might have eaten coarser vegetation more frequently than juveniles.
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Wikipedia