FAMILY 53.--ELEPHANTIDÆ. (1 Genus, 2 Species.)
GENERAL DISTRIBUTION. __________________________________/\__________________________________ / \ NEOTROPICAL| NEARCTIC |PALÆARCTIC | ETHIOPIAN | ORIENTAL | AUSTRALIAN SUB-REGIONS|SUB-REGIONS|SUB-REGIONS|SUB-REGIONS|SUB-REGIONS|SUB-REGIONS. -----------+-----------+-----------+-----------+-----------+------------ LIVING SPECIES. | | | | | -- -- -- --|-- -- -- --|-- -- -- --|1. 2. 3 -- |1. 2. 3. 4 |-- -- -- -- | | | | | EXTINCT SPECIES. | | | | | 1. 2 -- -- |1. 2. 3. 4 |1. 2. 3. 4 |1 -- -- -- |1 -- 3 -- |-- -- -- -- | | | | |
The elephants are now represented by two species, the African, which ranges all over that continent south of the Sahara, and the Indian, which is found over all the wooded parts of the Oriental region, from the slopes of the Himalayas to Ceylon, and eastward, to the frontiers of China and to Sumatra and Borneo. These, however, are but the feeble remnants of a host of gigantic creatures, which roamed over all the great continents except Australia during the Tertiary period, and several of which were contemporary with man.
_Extinct Elephants._--At least 14 extinct species of _Elephas_, and a rather greater number of the allied genus _Mastodon_ (distinguished by their less complex grinding teeth) have now been { 228}discovered. Elephants ranged over all the Palæarctic and Nearctic regions in Post-Pliocene times; in Europe and Central India they go back to the Pliocene; and only in India to the Upper Miocene period; the number of species increasing as we go back to the older formations.
In North America two or three species of _Mastodon_ are Post-pliocene and Pliocene; and a species is found in the caves of Brazil, and in the Pliocene deposits of the pampas of La Plata, of the Bolivian Andes, and of Honduras and the Bahamas. In Europe the genus is Upper Miocene and Pliocene, but is especially abundant in the former period. In the East, it extends from Perim island to Burmah and over all India, and is mostly Miocene, but with perhaps one species Pliocene in Central India.
An account of the range of such animals as belong to extinct families of Proboscidea, will be found in Chapters VI. and VII.; from which it will be seen that, although the family Elephantidæ undoubtedly originated in the Eastern Hemisphere, it is not improbable that the first traces of the order Proboscidea are to be found in N. America.