Palaeoloxodon cypriotes

Palaeoloxodon cypriotes is an extinct species of dwarf elephant that inhabited the island of Cyprus during the Late Pleistocene. A probable descendant of the large straight-tusked elephant of mainland Europe and West Asia, the species is among the smallest known dwarf elephants, with fully grown individuals having an estimated shoulder height of only 1 metre (3.3 ft). It represented one of only two large animal species on the island alongside the Cypriot pygmy hippopotamus. The species became extinct around 12,000 years ago, around the time humans first colonised Cyprus, and potential (but disputed) evidence of human hunting has been found.

Cyprus dwarf elephant Temporal range:
Molar and jaw fragments from type locality
Scientific classification
Domain:	Eukaryota
Kingdom:	Animalia
Phylum:	Chordata
Class:	Mammalia
Order:	Proboscidea
Family:	Elephantidae
Genus:	†Palaeoloxodon
Species:	†P. cypriotes
Binomial name
†Palaeoloxodon cypriotes (Bate, 1904)
Synonyms
Elephas cypriotes Bate 1904

History of research and excavations

The first recorded finds were by Dorothea Bate in 1902 from the cave deposit of Páno Díkomo-Imbohary in the southern part of the Pentadáktylos/Kyrenia mountain range that runs across northern Cyprus. The remains were originally described in a paper in Proceedings of the Royal Society in 1903 by Bate, when the species was named as Elephas cypriotes, with additional description of the remains in a later paper in the Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society in 1905. This locality remains one of the richest sites of the species remains. Remains of dwarf elephants have now been found at over 20 localities across Cyprus. These localities include rockshelters, caves as well as sites adjacent to rivers or ponds and alluvial fan deposits.

Evolution

It is suggested that P. cypriotes is descended from Palaeoloxodon xylophagou, a species which is known from a partial skull collected near the village of Xylofagou in southeast Cyprus dating to the late Middle Pleistocene (MIS 7, 243–191,000 years ago) alongside molars, tusks and sparse postcranial remains from two other sites in southeast Cyprus, Achna and Ormídeia. P. xylophagou is around 3.5 times larger than P. cypriotes, but still only around 7% the size of its mainland ancestor. Both species are considered to have ultimately descended from the very large straight-tusked elephant (Palaeoloxodon antiquus) of mainland Europe and Western Asia. Cyprus remained an island even during episodes of low sea level, suggesting that the ancestors of the Cyprus dwarf elephants arrived on the island by swimming, with the likeliest route being from southeastern Anatolia to the Karpas Peninsula on the northeast of the island, which even considering additional exposed land area due to lowered sea levels is a minimum of 60 kilometres (37 mi), further than the known swimming distance record for elephants (48 kilometres (30 mi)), suggesting that it was an unlikely "sweepstakes dispersal". Cyprus would likely have been visible from mainland Anatolia. The size reduction was the result of insular dwarfism, which is likely the result of the reduction in available food, predation and competition.

Description

Paleoloxodon cypriotes was comparable in size to Palaeoloxodon falconeri from Sicily (depicted)

Palaeoloxodon cypriotes is known from fragmentary remains, primarily molar teeth, along with tusks and rare postcranial material, including a femur. Palaeoloxodon cypriotes was around 1 metre (3.3 ft) tall when fully grown, making it the smallest known dwarf elephant species, along with the similarly sized Sicillian-Maltese Palaeoloxodon falconeri. In comparison to P. falconeri, the teeth dimensions are somewhat smaller. The estimated body weight of P. cypriotes is only 200 kilograms (440 lb), a weight reduction of 98% from its straight-tusked elephant ancestors, which weighed about 10 tonnes. Their molars however were about 40% of the size of the mainland straight-tusked elephants' molars (with the teeth around the size of the milk molars of P. antiquus), which retained the same length-width ratio, but with reduced lamellae (plate) counts, with only 11 lamellae in the third molar as opposed to 18 in mainland P. antiquus. Like P. falconeri, the plates of the molar teeth grew much more slowly than those of full sized elephants, which may suggest that like P. falconeri, P. cypriotes had a long lifespan comparable to those of full-sized elephants.

Jaw, molar, and tusk fragments of P. cypriotes as illustrated in Bate (1905)

Ecology

Cyprus exhibited a depauperate fauna during the Late Pleistocene, with the only other large mammal species being the Cypriot pygmy hippopotamus, with the only other terrestrial mammal species being the Cypriot mouse (which is still extant), and a species of genet (Genetta plesictoides). Remains of dwarf elephants are considerably less abundant than those of dwarf hippopotamus in fossil deposits, which may reflect that the dwarf elephants were less likely to become stuck in natural traps.

Extinction

The youngest well-dated remains of the species are known from Aetókremnos in southern Cyprus, which has been radiocarbon dated to around 11,504–12,096 years Before Present, close to the Pleistocene-Holocene boundary. This site is also considered to be the location of some of the earliest evidence of human habitation of Cyprus, who are suggested to have arrived on the island around 12–13,000 years ago. It has been argued that the site provides evidence for hunting of P. cypriotes (as well as dwarf hippopotamus) by Cyprus's earliest hunter-gatherer inhabitants, which may have been the cause of its extinction, though this has been contested by some authors who argue that the bones naturally accumulated at the site.

A 2024 study estimated that at the time of human arrival, the population of dwarf elephants on Cyprus to have been around 5000 individuals. The population would likely have been sensitive to hunting due to their slow life cycles, with the authors calculating that rates of over 200 individuals being killed per year put the species at risk of extinction, with extinction becoming essentially inevitable at over 350 hunted per year (realistically accomplishable with a human population of only a few thousand people probably present on Cyprus during this period). This likely would have resulted in a relatively rapid extinction following the colonisation at Cyprus, with the authors estimating a latest possible extinction date (taking into account the Signor-Lipps effect) of around 10,300-9,100 years ago.

Further reading

• Masseti, M., Did endemic dwarf elephants survive on Mediterranean islands up to protohistorical times? in Cavarretta, Gioia, Mussi & Palombo, La terra degli Elefanti, The World of Elephants (Rome, 2001) pp. 402–406
• Palombo, M. R., Endemic elephants of the Mediterranean Islands: knowledge, problems and perspectives in Cavarretta et al., op. cit.
• Simmons, Alan H. (1999). Faunal extinction in an island society: pygmy hippopotamus hunters of Cyprus. Interdisciplinary Contributions to Archaeology. Kluwer Academic/Plenum Publishers. p. 382. doi:10.1007/b109876. ISBN 978-0-306-46088-3. OCLC 41712246.