06/06/2026
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Reverse Elephant
Deinotherium is a genus of large extinct elephant-like proboscideans that appeared in the Middle Miocene and survived until the Early Pleistocene.
Although superficially resembling modern elephants, they had notably more flexible necks, limbs adapted to a more cursorial lifestyle as well as tusks emerging from the lower jaw that curved downwards and back, lacking the upper tusks present in other proboscideans. Deinotherium was a widespread genus, ranging from East Africa to southern Europe and to the east in the Indian subcontinent. They were primarily browsing animals with a diet mainly consisting of leaves, and they most likely went extinct as forested areas were gradually replaced by open grassland during the latter half of the Neogene, surviving longest in Africa, where they persisted into the Early Pleistocene.
Deinotherium has a long history, possibly dating back as early as the 17th century when a French surgeon named Matsorier found the bones of large animals in an area known as the "field of giants" near Lyon. Matsorier is said to have exhibited these bones across France and Germany as the supposed bones of a French monarch, until he was exposed and the bones were handed over to the French National Museum of Natural History.
In 1775 researchers recognized the bones as belonging to an animal "similar to a mammoth" and during the late 18th/early 19th century George Cuvier hypothesized that they actually belonged to a large tapir with upwards curving tusks which he named Tapir gigantesque. Another early hypothesis suggested that Deinotherium was a sirenian that used its tusks to anchor itself to the sea floor while sleeping.
These tusks are without doubt the most immediately visible feature of Deinotherium. Unlike in modern proboscideans, which possess tusks that grow from the upper incisors, the tusks of Deinotherium grow from the lower incisors, with upper incisors and upper and lower canines missing entirely. The curvature is initially formed by the mandible itself, with the teeth themselves erupting at only the halfway point of the curve. The degree to which the tusks follow the direction predetermined by the mandible varies between specimens, with some tusks following the curve and pointing backwards, forming an almost semicircular shape, while in other specimens the tusks continue down almost vertically. The tusks have a roughly oval cross-section and could reach a length of 1.4 m.
The origin of Deinotheres can be found in the Oligocene of Africa with the relatively small bodied Chilgatherium. Initially restricted to Africa, the continued northward movement of the African Plate eventually caused the Proboscidean Datum Event, during which proboscideans diversified and spread into Eurasia, among them the ancestral Prodeinotherium, thought to be the direct predecessor of the larger Deinotherium. Generally, Deinotherium displays relatively little change in morphology throughout its evolution, but a steady increase in body size from 2 meters shoulder height in Prodeinotherium to up to 4 meters in later Deinotherium species and a mass far exceeding even large African elephants.
Several key adaptations suggest that Deinotherium was a folivorous, browsing proboscidean that preferred open woodland habitats and fed on the leaves of the tree canopy. In Asia D. indicum has been associated with wet and warm, low-energy woodland and in Portugal deinotheriid remains were found in regions corresponding with moist, tropical to subtropical woodland conditions likened to modern Senegal. A browsing lifestyle is supported by the inclination of the occiput that gives Deinotherium a slightly more raised head posture, and their teeth, which strongly resemble those of modern tapirs, animals that predominantly feed on fruits, flowers, bark and leaves.
