Dwarf Mammoth Once Roamed Crete

Researchers analyze a diminutive forelimb bone, calling it conclusive evidence that a tiny mammoth resided on the Greek island.

Written byBob Grant

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Think mammoth, only smallerWIKIMEDIA COMMONS, PETR NOVAK

A mammoth that stood only 1 meter tall and weighed in at 300 kilograms used to call the small Mediterranean Island of Crete home, according to scientists at London's Natural History Museum. Researchers had previously unearthed what they thought were fossil elephant teeth on Crete, but the discoveries last year of another molar—with structural characteristics of mammoths—and a small humerous on the island suggested a mammoth species that appeared to be struck by island dwarfism, where island-bound species evolve to have smaller stature. "This creature would look like a baby Asian elephant, only chunkier and with curvy tusks," Victoria Herridge, paleontologist and first author of the Proceedings of the Royal Society B paper reporting the findings, told Nature.

Herridge and her coauthor Adrian Lister dubbed ...

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Meet the Author

Bob Grant
From 2017 to 2022, Bob Grant was Editor in Chief of The Scientist, where he started in 2007 as a Staff Writer. Before joining the team, he worked as a reporter at Audubon and earned a master’s degree in science journalism from New York University. In his previous life, he pursued a career in science, getting a bachelor’s degree in wildlife biology from Montana State University and a master’s degree in marine biology from the College of Charleston in South Carolina. Bob edited Reading Frames and other sections of the magazine.
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