elephants

From: Peter Metcalfe <metcalph_at_voyager.co.nz>
Date: Fri, 10 Apr 1998 15:08:02 +1200 (NZST)


David Dunham:

>Martin Crim proposed elephants in Teshnos.

It's not original to him. An important Teshnan Noble is known as the Prince of Elephants.

>I have conceived of the desire to have elephants in Umathela (presumably
>the shade-loving Asiatic variety, given the forests).

Gloranthan Beastiary (box p4) mentions the Shovel-Tuskers of Pamaltela but doesn't say what they are or where they are from. Perusing a copy of Dawkin's 'Climbing Mount Improbable' over Xmas, I found a description of some elephantoid species.

        'Modern elephant tusks are the enormously enlarged upper
        incisor teeth but many fossil forms, such as some of the
        Mastodonts, had more prominent lower incisors also
        pointing downwards.  Sometimes they were large and spiky
        like the tusks we now see only in the upper jaw.  In other
        kinds they were flat so that the two great teeth together
        constituted a broad shovel or a spade of ivory prolonging
        the lower jaw.  The shovel extended so far in front of the
        lower jaw that the upper lip could not reach the food it
        dug up.  It seems probable that the incipent trunk extended
        originally to work against the shovel and grasp the food that
        the shovel dug.'
                        Climbing Mount Improbable p83.

The rest of the passage details a scenario whereby the modern elephants trunk evolved out of the trunk out of the shovel-elephant and says a better description can be found in J. Maynard Smith's 'A Theory of Evolution'. From another source, some species worth considering might be Gomphotherium, Amebelodon, Platybelodon and Gnathobelodon. All these lived in the Miocene to Pliocene era. I imagine these beasts would be domesticated in Fonrit as well as they are more reliable than horses.

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