ABSTRACT
The Order Proboscidea comprises the elephants and their extinct relatives. This group of animals passed its acme long ago and today only two species remain both having a limited distribution in the Old World tropics. The earliest proboscideans appeared in the Late Eocene. Up to the end of the Tertiary, the mastodonts were the dominant group and it was not until the beginning of the Pleistocene that the true elephants, with their lamellar cheek teeth, made their appearance. The Auvergne Mastodont, Anancus arvernensis, dates from the Pliocene but survived during the entire Villafranchian. Like other mastodonts it has tubercular cheek teeth, useful for the chopping of leaves and succulent plants but not grass. Borson's mastodon had much shorter tusks than Anancus and they were curved upward; in addition it carried vestigial tusks in the front of the lower jaw. The Woolly Mammoth was present in Europe from the Riss to the end of the Wurm.
