Elephants shrink on Mediterranean islands
Marooned proboscideans evolve down to the size of a large dog, repeatedly and independently.
- When
- —
- Duration
- 1.2 million years
- Known to
- ± 200 thousand years
- Era
- Early Pleistocene, Quaternary
Elephants that reach Sicily, Malta, Cyprus and Crete during low sea-level phases become dwarfed, some to under a metre at the shoulder and a hundredth of their mainland mass — a large animal on a small island with no predators gains nothing from size and pays for it in food. The same islands produce giant dormice and giant swans, the small-animal half of the same rule. The single central nasal opening in dwarf elephant skulls from Sicily has been proposed, plausibly, as an origin of the Cyclops legend.