{"id":605134,"date":"2026-09-04T01:50:12","date_gmt":"2026-09-04T01:50:12","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/605134\/"},"modified":"2026-09-04T01:50:12","modified_gmt":"2026-09-04T01:50:12","slug":"it-looked-like-a-pig-and-was-just-20cm-tall-meet-the-first-ever-elephant-on-the-planet-which-looked-nothing-like-todays-majestic-giants","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/605134\/","title":{"rendered":"It looked like a pig and was just 20cm tall \u2013 meet the first-ever elephant on the planet, which looked nothing like today&#8217;s majestic giants"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Elephants\u00a0are the largest terrestrial animals alive today, not to mention some of the largest from prehistoric periods too &#8211; some recently extinct species of\u00a0Palaeoloxodon\u00a0may have stood nearly 5m tall, dwarfing\u00a0<a href=\"https:\/\/www.discoverwildlife.com\/prehistoric-life\/mammoths-guide\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">woolly mammoths<\/a>\u00a0and modern elephants.<\/p>\n<p>However, elephants haven\u2019t always been enormous. 60 million years ago, there lived an unassuming animal known as\u00a0Eritherium. It looked a lot like a pig, but standing 20cm tall and weighing no more than 5kg, it was more like the kind you\u2019d keep as a pet than the kind you\u2019d farm for bacon.<\/p>\n<p>Eritherium\u00a0is considered the earliest proboscidean &#8211; the scientific name for elephants and their extinct relatives. A number of different, large-bodied lineages evolved from\u00a0Eritherium, including the large, chin-tusked deinotheres, the strange, long-jawed gomphotheres, and the elephantids &#8211; the group that includes\u00a0Palaeoloxodon, mammoths, and living <a href=\"https:\/\/www.discoverwildlife.com\/animal-facts\/mammals\/facts-about-elephants\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">elephants<\/a>.<\/p>\n<p>Not all elephants since\u00a0Eritherium\u00a0have been massive, though. There are several\u00a0<a href=\"https:\/\/www.discoverwildlife.com\/prehistoric-life\/dwarf-elephants\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">adorably cute dwarf species<\/a>\u00a0that evolved after their large ancestors became trapped on islands and subsequently\u00a0<a href=\"https:\/\/www.discoverwildlife.com\/animal-facts\/how-big-or-small-could-animals-get\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">shrank in size due to a lack of resources<\/a>. This is an evolutionary process known as \u2018island dwarfism\u2019.<\/p>\n<p>Sadly we were unable find an illustration of an Eritherium. The top image is a close up of an elephant&#8217;s eye. Credit: Selvin \/ Getty<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Elephants\u00a0are the largest terrestrial animals alive today, not to mention some of the largest from prehistoric periods too&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":605135,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[7],"tags":[85,46,141],"class_list":["post-605134","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-science","tag-il","tag-israel","tag-science"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/605134","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=605134"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/605134\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/605135"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=605134"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=605134"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=605134"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}