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rhamphotheca: Ancient Elephants Followed the Leader by Ann Gibbons When a herd of prehistoric elephants walked through mud in the Arabian Desert about 7 million years ago, its members unwittingly left their footprints—and clues about their social lives—behind. Those prints now reveal how the herd behaved: Just like modern elephants, mature males meandered on their own while the rest of the herd apparently followed a female leader. Researchers have long wondered when modern elephants began living in matriarchal groups in which females and young follow a female leader while males disperse when they reach sexual maturity. Today, both African and Asian elephants live in complex matriarchal groups, so scientists have hypothesized that their common ancestor 5 million to 7 million years ago also lived in a female-led herd of Proboscidea (the order that includes living elephants and several extinct families), says paleontologist William Sanders of the University of Michigan, Ann Arbor, who was not involved in the new work. With the discovery of a remarkable 260-meter-long trackway, researchers can now get a glimpse of how some prehistoric elephants moved across the landscape at the site of Mleisa 1 in the Al Gharbia region of Abu Dhabi. The tracks, which are the most extensive ever recorded for mammals, were made by at least 13 proboscidians of different sizes, according to a study published today in Biology Letters… (read more: Science NOW)     (image: (Elephants, bottom right) Mauricio Antón; (aerial, top right); Mauricio Antón; (top left) Faysal Bibi)

rhamphotheca:

Ancient Elephants Followed the Leader

by Ann Gibbons

When a herd of prehistoric elephants walked through mud in the Arabian Desert about 7 million years ago, its members unwittingly left their footprints—and clues about their social lives—behind. Those prints now reveal how the herd behaved: Just like modern elephants, mature males meandered on their own while the rest of the herd apparently followed a female leader.

Researchers have long wondered when modern elephants began living in matriarchal groups in which females and young follow a female leader while males disperse when they reach sexual maturity. Today, both African and Asian elephants live in complex matriarchal groups, so scientists have hypothesized that their common ancestor 5 million to 7 million years ago also lived in a female-led herd of Proboscidea (the order that includes living elephants and several extinct families), says paleontologist William Sanders of the University of Michigan, Ann Arbor, who was not involved in the new work.

With the discovery of a remarkable 260-meter-long trackway, researchers can now get a glimpse of how some prehistoric elephants moved across the landscape at the site of Mleisa 1 in the Al Gharbia region of Abu Dhabi. The tracks, which are the most extensive ever recorded for mammals, were made by at least 13 proboscidians of different sizes, according to a study published today in Biology Letters…

(read more: Science NOW)    

(image: (Elephants, bottom right) Mauricio Antón; (aerial, top right); Mauricio Antón; (top left) Faysal Bibi)

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