This Fossilized Tusk Stuns Paleontologists!

It was a massive creature that roamed around the Mediterranean long, long ago.

Transcript

00:00this is a dig site in israel and a site of a recent and exciting paleontological find this

00:10is the fossilized tusk of a prehistoric elephant they used to walk the lands around the mediterranean

00:15this is avi levy the director of the excavation he says the tusk is a massive 8.2 feet long and

00:21it belonged to the equally large straight tusked elephant or paleoloxodon antiquus he says it's an

00:27extremely good condition which is a rarity oh it's unique because the the state of preservation

00:32is really good we didn't saw so much a preserved tusk like this we know that this type of animal

00:38the straight tusk animal disappeared from this area around 400 000 years old and this task is dated to

00:46500 000 years old he says just one tusk from these elephants can weigh around 330 pounds and this is

00:51the largest complete one they've ever found when the species roam the lands they would have stood

00:56nearly 14 feet tall or upwards of 40 larger than modern day elephants weighing in at around 16 tons

01:02around 32 and a half thousand pounds