The tree under your feet looks so small…Shocking view of '3,600-year-old rhinoceros' that boasts the largest size of any mammal (Blue Pax Editorial Department) |

The Cenozoic Era is a section of the Proterozoic Era that began about 66 million years ago and continues to the present day. Although it is a very short period of time compared to the Paleozoic and Mesozoic eras, the more recent the era, the more detailed and abundant the various “information” remaining in the strata. In other words, from an “information-dense” perspective, the Cenozoic Era is a very “rich era.”

This was the era in which many mammals such as mammoths and saber-toothed cats appeared, but of course not all animal groups that appeared in this era were able to leave descendants. Some of them flourished for a period of time and then disappeared as a whole.

Therefore, from the “Cenozoic” edition of the famous series “The 4-Billion-Year History of the Great Evolution of Life,” we would like to present the characteristic biological species of this era. This time, we'll take a look at the 3,000-plus-year-old cousins ​​of elephants and rhinos, creatures common in modern zoos.

*This article is based on BluebacksColor Illustration of the 4 Billion Year History of the Great Evolution of Life, the Cenozoic Era, the Age of Mammals – Diversification, the Ice Age, and the Birth of Humanity“, the content has been reorganized, re-edited and delivered to you.

The beginning of a long nose?

At about the time that Mesohippus, the ancestor of horses, began living in the forests of North America, a new species of proboscis appeared in Africa. The name of this proboscis is “Moeritherium”.

While Phosphatherium (see this article), which we present as a proboscis from the Paleocene, remains a mystery, we know enough about Maurytherium that a skeleton has been assembled to reconstruct the entire body.

Its appearance can be summed up in one word: long torso and short legs. Although the total length is about 2 meters, the height at the shoulder is only about 60 cm. Although they did not have long tusks like modern elephants, they did have fairly long incisors (elephant tusks are incisors, not tusks).

Example of a restored statue of the Moeterium image by gettyimages

In 2008, Alexander J. S. Liu and colleagues at the University of Oxford (UK) conducted chemical analyzes of Morithrium teeth, suggesting that it may have been feeding on aquatic plants underwater. Based on this analysis, the mourethrium was either aqueous or semi-aqueous. Because the ecology of Phosphatherium, the oldest proboscis, is shrouded in mystery, it is possible that the history of proboscis began in water.

Then Fuumea appears to be chasing the moritherium.