The animals, thought to belong to the species Rhynchotherium falconeri, died in or close to a river about 5.5 million years in the past.
Though their deaths had been probably tons of of years aside, their our bodies all ended up in the identical place and had been buried alongside different animals that met the identical destiny, the Museum of Pure Historical past of Florida stated in an announcement.
Gomphotheres unfold to virtually each continent throughout their 20 million yr reign.
Picture: Florida Museum of Pure Historical past/Merald Clark
In the present day, the river now not exists, however fossils found on the Montbrook website supply paleontologists a panoramic view of life in prehistoric Florida.
Within the spring of 2022, paleontologist Jonathan Bloch and his staff on the College of Florida unearthed some elements of a gomphothere skeleton.
The primary gomphotheres had been found in spring 2022 and meticulously excavated over a number of months by consultants and educated volunteers.
Picture: Florida Museum of Pure Historical past/Kristen Grace
Scattered Gomphothera bones have been discovered at Montbrook previously, so the staff couldn’t discover something uncommon. Nevertheless, a couple of days later, a volunteer digging close by found the hinged foot of one thing very massive.
“I got here throughout toe bones and ankle bones one after the opposite. As I dug additional, I found a cubit and a radius. All of us knew at that second that we had been about to do one thing extraordinary! »
– A quote from Dean Warner, Volunteer
The excavations thus enabled the invention of a number of full skeletons, together with one grownup and not less than seven younger skeletons.
The grownup skeleton is essentially the most full gomphothere skeleton from this era found in Florida and among the finest preserved in North America, stated Jonathan Bloch, who can also be curator of vertebrate paleontology on the Museum of Florida Pure Historical past, in a press launch.
It’s a novel discovery, he enthuses.
Whereas the staff waits for the specimens to be totally excavated earlier than they’ll precisely decide their measurement, Jonathan Bloch estimates the grownup was two meters tall on the shoulder. With the tusks, the cranium is over two meters lengthy.
Gomphotheres had been much less imposing than mammoths and their measurement was much like that of elephants. These animals would have appeared in Africa at first of the Miocene, round 23 million years in the past, after which unfold to Europe and Asia.
Then, about 16 million years in the past, they made their method to North America throughout the Bering Land Bridge. They settled in South America 2.7 million years in the past.
