The Elephant That Was Bigger Than Every Non-Sauropod Dinosaur Ever 

Wanna See Something More Interesting: ru-vid.com/video/%D0%B2%D0%B8%D0%B4%D0%B5%D0%BE-iZ_iLxygKjY.html The video may not have been updated yet, but in case you noticed to small cuts towards the end of the video, I had to remove two small sections

"That still only counts as one!" -Gimli

The Trunk is the key to the Elephants massive size because, unlike other herbivores, elephants don't need long flimsy necks to reach the tops of trees. Elephants can grow larger and sturdier than non-trunk herbivores.

Thanos for scale

Interesting to see how the small Kiwi and Giant Elephant Bird are also more closely related to each other than to ostrich, just like the small forest elephant and Paleoloxodon Namadicus are more closely related to each other than to the modern African elephant.

So Oliphaunts were REAL. Good job Tolkien

It is hard to evaluate biggest size without a large data set because you might have a Shaq fossil or a Kevin Hart fossil. Need to account for intra-species size variability.

Can you imagine the damage caused when one of these giants went through a period of musth 💀

Who would have guessed that there once was an elephant larger than T. rex.

3:32 Mumei what are you doing standing with that Brontosaurus😂?

Megafauna are so cool to learn about tbh. Wild how we now have much fewer giants around these days.

"Look Mr. Frodo! It's an Oliphant!"

I wonder why it grew so big in the first place? The theoretical arms race between Sauropod and Therapod Dinosaurs make sense but there were no titanic mammalian predators to force this size.

That there once again will come a truly huge specimen of the African Bush Elephant, is doubtful. Trophy hunters took out the biggest and healthiest specimens a long time ago. I do not think we will ever see anything like the 11 ton elephant that was killed in Angola in the fifties, ever again.

So basically, the Elephant and Rhino remain the two largest land mammals of all time.

Missed opportunity to name it "Oliphauntus Mumakili"

I love how some other members of the Paleoloxodon genus were shorter than a human

The story from huge zulu elephant hunts was that they had a group of people attack from the front as distraction, with a few brave men with an ax, attacking from behind, to chop through a rear achilles tendon. That disabled the elephant.

when watching this video, i had to think about the scenes from the second and third "Lord of the Rings"-Movie. and today i learn once again what interesting species our own real world ones had. and the sad thing is, i - like many other people - like big animals, despite knowing how many great small animals exist(ed) out there who don´t get even a fraction of the recognition, the humongous big species are always getting.

3:31 Surprise Mumei, for scale.

You can see a trend that as the elephant gets larger, the torso slopes more from the bottom of the femur to the top of the shoulder to form a right angle triangle, increasing its structural stability and allowing it to carry more weight without negatively affecting the spine. These animals were probably extremely sturdy and athletic for their size.

So, Yujiro vs giant elephant was based of this

Imagine if Namadicus survived long enough to be used in wars like the Crusades.

I love that this kind of in-depth content is out here for us all to just dig into. Thank you.

Leave it to Elephants and Rhinos to be the Two largest land mammals ever

I have just come across your channel, and I now have to spend my Saturday watching all of your videos 😅. I look forward to all of your work in the future.

Great video about a truly amazing animal! Thank you for making it.

I often look for these types of scaling pics when I'm comparing the sizes and shapes of things. I really understood the information, great job!

The largest land mammal to ever walk the earth? That would be your mom

Great Video! Paleoloxodon is such an amazing animal.

Good video! Paleoloxodon needs more recognition! I have a brilliant eofauna model of one. A herd of paleoloxodon feature in chapter 16 of Carnian Street.

One of my favorite animals. Good job on the video!!

A real life Oliphaunt from LOTR. Epic.

If a 16 foot tall, 18 ton Namadicus were the average adult of its species...imagine an exceptionally-sized 36 ton one, 20 feet at the shoulder! This would basically be Peter Jackson's Mumakil.

I have read that the closeness in genetic relations between the African forest elephant and Paleoloxodon namadicus has been overstated. Not completely sure though. Those 2 species are still very interesting though! Very solid video!

Very exciting. Great video. The relationship to the African forest elephant is something I didn't know until now.

There are a lot these channels on the Tube, this is one of the best IMO.

Recently subscribed to this channel so some terms are still new i.e. genus. Learning a lot though!

The Joakim from Sabaton comparrison got me so confused for a sec but now i just realise that ur a cool dude

Man do I love videos like these. Thanks!

Good work as always

Loved it, great video. Nothing wrong with a big ol elephant

Where that Thanos from Marvel, Joakim from Sabaton and Mumei from HoloLive in those size comparisons? I'm laughing my ass off right now XD

I love so much Palaeoloxodon, and i bought its Eofauna figure. The charismatic giant!

This is fantastic and incredible

3:31 Sabaton lead vocalist Joakim and Anime Vtuber Mumei for size comparison

Is it a possibility or already well known that at a certain level of evolving to giant sizes, size becomes a means of efficiency rather than defence

for your great content..editing..and easy to listen narration you earned my sub..

I wonder if the head crest had massive muscles attached to it for head movements, which makes perfect sense considering the other features attached to its head like tusks!

Since the modern forest elephant is more closely related to paleoloxodon then the african bush elephant, should we change its genus name to something else? Or to paleoloxodon as well?

I wonder how many of these “species” were close enough to interbreed and if there was a speciation continuum.

Loved the Thanos image at 3:08!

There are some specimens of giant Hadrosaurs that could rival Paleoloxodon in size (although they are fragmentary). Still, Paleoloxodon namadicus is a very impressive elephant that gave even the Paraceratherium a run for its money.

I presume pre-civilisation humans only hunted megafauna when they were in a compromised position, such as traveling beneath an elevated position, in a drought, in the period they just left the herd and are inexperienced and smaller, while in water, or constricted without a way to retreat or fight back. This would still cause a lot of extinction as megafauna populations tend to be pretty low in general, adding any significant predation from virtually 0 is a a big jump, and the megafauna might make decisions to avoid human hunting that would reduce their numbers e.g. avoid migrating.

I noticed no mention of the Mastodon or the mammoth. Where do they fit in this?

Great vid respect from Ireland 🇮🇪 👏 👍

Great show

Science: the paleoloxodon. Lotr fans: the mumakil(oliphant)

Grey as a mouse Big as a house Nose like a snake I make the earth shake As I tramp through the grass Trees crack as I pass With horns in my mouth I walk in the South Flapping big ears Beyond count of years I stump round and round Never lie on the ground Not even to die Oliphaunt am I Biggest of all Huge, old, and tall If ever you'd met me You wouldn't forget me If you never do You won't think I'm true But old Oliphaunt am I And I never lie

RU-vid seems to have an uptick in Palaeoloxodon vids lately; it’s amazing with the interest in this prehistoric megafauna.

I remember coming across that genetic study for a paper I did in college. Finding out that the Forest elephant was closer to the Paleoloxodon than the bush elephant blew my mind!

Zunesha is real

Still smaller than an Oliphant ...

Great video, very interesting. I love proboscideans💘🐘

A paleoloxodon was 18-19 tons heavy and 6.7 (without teeth) meters long and 4.3 meters tall. The shantungosaurus was 16 tons heavy and 15 meters long and 5 meter tall. The shantungosaurus was in relationship to paleoloxodon bigger. (I know in sience size is defined by the weight of the animal). Shantungosaurus was a hadrosaur.

To be fair, some species of hadrosaurs were longer and havier than Paleoloxodon

Being that huge meant that even newborns would've been too big for all but the largest macropredators to take down. That said, it would've had ridiculously long gestation rate & been incredibly sensitive to habitat conversion. It isn't a coincidence that the Proboscidians that came after them were more modest in size; widespread ecosystem restructuring over the course of the Pleistocene effectively doomed most of the megafauna that carried over in the Pliocene. Blaming Humans for that just reveals how many so-called "scientists" have an anti-natalist bias.

Hey, would you happen to have the source source of the image at 2:29 ? I think it's the Indian National Museum which happens to be in my city, so i was just curious.

Bro needs more subs

Perhaps dinosaurs didn’t stop growing during their life, like crocodiles, and just got bigger and bigger until their size killed them so the fossils we find are untypical and for most of their lives dinosaurs were slightly smaller.

Anyone knows if the huge elephants in Lord of the rings are based on one of these species? PS: Obviously they weren't as huge as the ones from the movies.

This is amazing! Elephants bigger than some dinosaurs! They would have had no enemies apart from humans! 22 tonnes, they were massive!👍

A truly spectacular creature!

Oliphant!

Oliphaunts are real!

3:30 Sabaton Vocalist and Nanashi Mumei

It makes sense! If nowadays elephants can handle being so huge, then in the past they should've been enormous

Nigel: I’ve heard that mainly, these large apes, they’re bread eaters mainly. They go for any kind of bread. David: And yet as a race they’ve developed no baking skills… Nigel: None whatsoever, no… David: But they still feed on bread primarily. Derek: They’re not a race, though they’re a genus… Nigel: Well, some of them are smarter than others, you can’t really…. David: They’re a culture. Derek: They’re a genus and a sub culture. David: They’re not a counter culture though. You think of the baboons as being a counter cultural ape… Nigel: The smaller monkeys are mainly bread eaters as well… David: Well I know a bloke with a monkey that eats soup. Onion soup with crumbly bits on top….

This video does show a lot of, hopefully, facts about what type of animal had ever existed. So now I can imagine thousands of all kinds of animals. A lot of different kinds of animals.

Wonderful channel❤😊

Very good Documaster.

Palaeoloxodon namadicus a Pleistocene giant pachyderm

The true "Big E"

It's amazing that we don't hear of these. Instead we only hear of Mammoths and Mastodons. How did they go extinct?

Nothing makes me happier than the biggest mammal ever being another elephant.

Ahhh the Lord of the Rings elephants

I wonder if these magnificent mammals could've been domesticated like modern elephants 🐘, imagine 🤔 the possibilities.

Maybe the only land mammal in history that could be considered the favorite in a hypothetical match against a T-rex.

3:31- Oh hi :D

I dunno, I think Shantungosaurus gives it a run for it's money with the upper estimates being 20 tons.

Definitely came to this video after watching the Monster Face off between Paleoloxodon and T.rex

Paraceratherium is still considered the biggest land mammal currently, but still, great video!

3:30 what the moom doing?

3:30 what is mumei doing there?

2:56 This size reveal made my jaw DROP

Keep in mind that the 22 tonne estimate for this creature is extremely dubious The only source of measurement for the femur fragment's size is Prinsep (1834). The fact that this specimen has presumably not been seen, let alone measured, in more than 180 years is sufficient grounds for us to view the size estimate with heavy skepticism. Asier Larramendi himself says that the specimen must be restudied, admitting that he did not get the chance to study the specimen himself. The specimen is said to "likely" be stored in the Indian Museum of Kolkata, but it isn’t even certain that it still remains there . Until this specimen is recovered, the size estimate will not be anything more than speculative. Sagauni 1 is estimated at around 13 tonnes and comprises of limb elements along with cranial pieces and while larramendi states that it could’ve been a subadult based on the detached femoral head, fusion occurred extremely late in giant extinct proboscideans, as late as 50 years by which the animal would have long reached maturity The same goes for the 17t estimate for Paraceratherium, highly fragmentary and not exactly a good basis for a large record breaking estimate since most other specimen fall in the 8-11 ton range

Imagine the size of the Lion subspecies that hunted the Paleoloxodon in a large pack. 10-🦁 + 1-🐘= 🥩

Welcome to my TED Talk that I'm sure most won't see, and even fewer will bother to read. I encourage the brave and curious not to be intimidated by the length and hear me out. _The Human Hunter Hypothesis_ No way stone age humans were responsible for hunting any large megafauna to extinction, or could even play a significant role in their extinction through directly hunting the large animals. Relatively sudden changes in climate would be the number one culprit in my opinion, as it makes more logical sense. If human hunting played any part in the extinction of megafauna it wouldn't be from hunting the large animals directly, but through hunting smaller creatures that contributed to the food chain. Smaller animals like birds up to deer/antelope sized animals (these being easier/less dangerous prey) that were essential in spreading seeds in their scat or fur. Seeds necessary to sprout and provide the food for the larger herbivores, and when that food was no longer accessible and the large herbivores died off from starvation, their large predators would also die off. Even then this overhunting of smaller animals wouldn't be a large contributing factor for the megafaunal creatures. The hunting of megafauna would have to be out of desperation, due solely to the extreme risks involved. Large herbivores can be just as dangerous, or even moreso, as predators. I think the whole idea of human hunting being associated with megafaunal extinction by paleontologists, paleoanthropologists, etc. has more to do with a combination of factors; 1) the infancy of the modern natural sciences having not yet been refined and its small sample size of discoveries of megafauna remains showing signs of human hunting/butchery which led to, 2) a convenient explanation for why these animals suddenly died out, given the strong correlation of human appearance in some regions followed shortly by megafaunal extinctions. Since the hunting of such large beasts would take sophistication and intelligence, this fed into, 3) Good old fashioned human hubris, that still persists to this day. Since a lot of the natural sciences as we know them began around the early 19th century, it would be in poor taste in "modern society" to entertain the idea that early humans could be weak and vulnerable creatures barely surviving, however it would be "en vogue" to entertain the idea of early humans being masters of their domain and able to conquer the largest beasts to ever walk, especially at a time when the eperts in their field still held onto religious values like God giving Adam (and thus all mankind) domain over all creatures. This mindset (albeit less religious and more secular) still exists and a lot of misconceptions of our early ancestors are only recently being overturned. There's still too many in the general public who think neanderthals were more ape-like than human, and even scientists more skeptical about neanderthal intelligence and capabilities with some believing they weren't capable of spoken language or creating art. This in spite of ever growing recent discoveries of artistically crafted artefacts found at sites known to be neanderthal. Even today it is still widespread that our ancestors are responsible, or at least partly, for the extincion of megafauna across most of Eurasia and the Americas. This theory is so bogus and easily disproven by the extant (still living) species of megafauna in Africa. The _Out of Africa Theory_ is the best model we have to explain human origins with the African continent bearing the most sites containing early H. Sapiens and other human species sites including H. Erectus and H. Neanderthalensis (among others in our genus). There's no good explanation as to why early humans would hunt prehistoric megafauna to extinction across the entirety of Eurasia and the entirety of the Americas but leave Aftica's populations alone, especially since the largest populations of early humans would remain in or around Africa, Near/Middle East, and the Mediterranean. The Australian military lost a war to Emus in an effort to essentially make them go extinct and they had all the modern advantages including the use of machineguns, yet there's still a narrative of how small family/tribal groups of stone age hunters wiping out entire populations of megafaunal herbivores, even hunting large predators. This hypothesis is rooted in the development and use of projectile weapon technology and persistence/endurance hunting (literally running animals to death). For that to be even remotely possible the success rate for each hunt would need to be extremely high. So high that it falls into the realm of statistical impossibility. Even today modern hunters using rifles and other modern technologies (including corrective leses to improve eyesight) are considered especially skilled if they achieve higher than maybe a 56% success rate on average. I personally believe that the most likely explanation for the correlation between human hunters arriving in some locations and the resulting extinction of megafaunal species is due to environmental factors, namely sudden changes in climate, that pushed human migration into those regions. Early humans appearing in regions with megafauna could've also contributed more to their demise through the diseases and parasites they carried with them or those carried by their hunting dogs. Stone age hunters might be responsible for the recorded prehistoric extinctions found on islands, even larger ones like New Zealand's in the case of the large flightless moas, but that was only due to the limitations of the land size. Vast areas like Eurasia and the Americas wouldn't allow for such devastating hunting practices. The only truly known examples of continental sized extinctions caused by human hunting are modern examples involving relatively large populations of humans using modern weaponry (and possibly equally through human land development resulting in habitat loss) like in the case of the passenger pigeon. Presently it's estimated that +/-80% of successfully hunted animals are from only the same 10% of hunters. Keep in mind these are people using every modern technology at their disposal in designated hunting areas with a finite sqaure area. Only 1 in 10 out of hundreds or thousands of contemporary modern human hunters would be considered highly skilled, with the rest of the 90% being of varying skill level progressing downward with a majority being closer to being almost completely unskilled. Now try to picture small family groups/tribes beginning to inhabit huge areas like Eurasia, most not knowing how to craft anything more sophisticated than a throwing spear and possibly the atlatl, and only some having the most advanced technology being the most primitively basic bow and arrow, and these groups statistically having very few members capable of hunting, and even fewer being successful at it, during a time between 70,000 years ago when humans nearly went extinct with an estimated total human population size globally no higher than 100,000 due to the eruption of a supervolcano called Toba, to roughly 10,000 years ago after the last major ice age where the global human population spread across all continents (excluding Antarctica) was only 4 million (half the population size of London), somehow being capable of causing the extinction of something like 85% of all megafaunal animals. Also consider that the majority of that 4 million in human population would still be centered around Africa and the surrounding area of the Mediterranean. Does that sound like it makes sense? A big thanks to anyone for getting this far, I appreciate taking the time to do so. I hope that my rambling may have provided something of value worth that time and effort. This concludes my TED Talk. Have a good day and take care.

3:08 Thanos used as a size reference, nice.

In the 19th century the British Museum is said to have acquired the tusks of a truly gigantic elephant. Called the Kilimanjaro Elephant by the Brits, it was also known by many other names, of which IMHO the most awesome was Malima Temboz -- The Mountain That Walks.