While I was walking along in Nameri, I found this tusker in one of the islands on the Jiya-Bhoreli river and was surprised. I had never seen a tusker like this guy before... The tusks seem to be heading backwards like in saber-toothed tiger. The closest predecessors of elephants which had backward pointing tusks seem to be back from the Oligocene(Paleomastodon) to the late tertiary(Gompotherium) times! Very interesting indeed, but I guess it's a common thing for modern elephants to sometimes have weird tusks because of various constraints. Need to find out a bit more about this.

6 comments | Leave a comment