Giant elephant cemetery unearthed in India: they roamed the Earth 300 thousand years ago

Scientists have found a giant elephant cemetery in India. According to the study, people feasted on mammoth-sized creatures 300,000 years ago.

The remains of one of the largest mammals that ever walked on Earth, Palaeoloxodon, were dug out of a quarry in Pampore. A well-preserved giant elephant skull with a straight tusk was found, as well as a whole cache of fossils and stone tools used by ancient people, TheSun reports.

Fractures in the elephant's skull gave scientists a rare opportunity to look inside. The researchers were able to determine that the cause of the animal's death was a disease.

"When we looked into the damaged part, we saw something strange inside. The elephant's skull has many air spaces that make the head lighter, but the bones along the sinuses had grown into an abnormal, spongy structure. This indicates that it was suffering from sinusitis, possibly due to an infection spreading from another part of the body or a severe respiratory illness. This could have led to his death," said Simon Parfitt, a researcher of human evolution at the Natural History Museum.

However, stone tools found in the quarry and broken bones of the elephant suggest that humans may have been involved in its death.

According to a study in the Journal of Vertebrate Palaeontology, humans feasted on mammoth-sized creatures 300,000-400,000 years ago.

Dr. Parfitt said it is possible that ancient humans smashed the bones with heavy stones to get at the nutritious bone marrow inside.

"Given the size of these animals and the relatively small size of human groups, it is unlikely that they would have been able to fully butcher this elephant before it started to rot. This means that people probably cut off the best pieces of meat rather than dismembering the carcass," the scientist suggested.

According to Simon Parfitt, this discovery has drawn the attention of archaeologists to this Indian region. Therefore, scientists are now looking more closely for new places with elephant remains.

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