The elephant family splits three ways
Mammoths, Asian elephants and African elephants diverge, and the mammoths head north.
- When
- —
- Duration
- 2.4 million years
- Known to
- ± 500 thousand years
- Era
- Pliocene, Cenozoic
The three surviving proboscidean lineages — Mammuthus, Elephas and Loxodonta — separate in Africa around 5 million years ago. Mammoths leave first, spreading into Eurasia and adapting progressively to colder, more open, grass-dominated environments: higher-crowned teeth with more enamel plates, smaller ears, and eventually the dense coat and fat reserves of the woolly mammoth. Asian elephants are more closely related to mammoths than either is to the African elephant.