The following is my translation of an article called: Skizzen aus den Lebensschicksalen der Elefantenstammes von Dr Günther Schlesinger, Wien. It appeared in a German popular science magazine, Kosmos Handweiser für Naturfreunde 1913, Heft 3, Seiten 89-94. The original article has various illustrations and diagrams but they aren't included in this version. Still, you're welcome to get your wax crayons and pencils out. Some of the taxonomic names have certainly since been emended, and others could be obsolete.
I'm not aware of any previous translation.
Trevor Dykes.

Sketches from the life histories of the elephant clan by Dr Günther Schlesinger, Vienna
Not only a new attraction, but also a very familiar one always forces the casual visitor in European zoos to regard it as something special, and to stop before reaching the mighty Polar bear: the elephant.

The reasons for this are various: through its size and unusual body shape it excites the imagination and, just as much, it provides a view into long past times with their, to us, enormous forms of animal and, as it goes about its business, the begging eyes and movements of its trunk and its slovenly gait of this globetrotter all entertain us and, indeed, even bring us to laughter.

And it can allow itself this dichotomy of incited emotions! It has so much pathos collected in its blood from its long chain of ancestors, that all the comedy cannot remove the gleam of its 'great past'.

Now we want to cease our laughter and scan the sketch of a cinematogramme running going back through immeasurable time, showing the stages of growth for the elephant family tree, and let that parade past us. But we want to make it pleasant, not just to recite dry facts, but rather to attempt and present the development of new types with their lifestyles and implications, and we do not want to forget the global roamings of this long distance walker.

The old ancestors and founding fathers of these now renowned giant animals lived during the Tertiary (Eocene), in the vicinity of today's Fayum in Egypt, and they led a humble existence. It was the Moeritherium (see Illustration 1). Small and tapir-like, it bears little resemblance to the characteristics of subsequent trunk bearers, and strikes us as being only the prototype for a fairly short line of its descendants. Its limited trunk, the short tusk-like incisors in the upper and lower jaws, and the hippopotamus-like cheek teeth allow us to recognise it as a swamp dweller and a mud rummager, who prized soft food above all else. Its descendant, the Palaeomastodon (s. Ill. 2) remained loyal to that environment. The typical trunked animal character is more strongly developed with it. The upper tusks are more pronounced albeit curved to the sides; the lower jaw closes to the front against two widely pressed teeth which collectively form a spatula, a further development from the condition seen in Moeritherium. Palaeomastodon had obviously undergone a change in function of the organs. The rummaging work, performed by the trunk for the ancestors, was now conducted horizontally by the spatula of the lower jaw. This may be in line with a more pronounced dependency on the swamp, which required the functions of touch to be performed by an elongated trunk.

Palaeomastodon already stood at a dead end in a developmental lineage of proboscides. (Additional note: The word used there is the quaint Proboszidier.) The next stage was approaching. Tetrabelodon (s. Ill. 3) moved in a wider environment and there are important reasons, above all the high degree of build of the lower jaw to a shovel, which show that the ancestors of Tetrabelodon were similar to the mastodons while being, in many respects, more primitive. Significant characteristics lead us to the assumption that a second species of the stem-genus, Moeritherium, gave rise to a 'cousin' of Palaeomastodon and led to Tetrabelodon. This cousin seems to have been better suited to a drier environment. Both it and its descendant, Tetrabelodon, used the lower jaw with the round tusks for rummaging; but it was more like a plough when the head was lowered. The trunk may have already sometimes served as a grasping organ.

And now food and feeding methods began to be decisive in a double respect: firstly for the development of the trunk and the tusks, and then for the transformation of the milling teeth. Simultaneously, there also began the first significant 'global stroll' in the history of the probiscans.

At the time of the first great regression of the Mediterranean in the Lower Miocene, the original tetrabelodonts (Tetr. pygmaeum) left Africa and spread into Europe (France, Italy, Steiermark and others). This change of homeland was apparently connected with a preference for different foods (roots, juicy plants and the like). The consequence of this was an increased employment of the trunk; this grew in length and there was a shrinkage of the lower tusks and the lower jaw; resulting from their non-usage, as their work of ground-breaking was prevented by the trunk.

We therefore see that, with Tetr. angustidens (s. Ill. 4), the tusks still closed together to form a ploughshare but, for Tetr. longirostres (s. Ill. 6), they have already grown away from each other, and the whole jaw has lost in length. As a substitute for the working possibilities, the upper tusks have stretched and taken over the function of the diminishing organs.

A further transformation concerns the cheek teeth. They were fairly primitive for Tetr. pygmaeum and of an indistinct construction. Five sideward running cusp rows are on the final molar, accessory cusps are absent, and the valleys between the rows (very much against the rule for mastodons) had their ground filled with cement.

The extensive grinding activity of the maxillary demanded an increase in the area of chewing surface; and the mastodons reacted to this need with the development of interposed columns of cement. They are already clearly developed for Tetr. arvernense (s. Ill. 5); in the case of Tetr. longirostre, there had been a large increase for the same reasons, and the number of ridges had increased by one.

The end of this developmental line was reached in the Pliocene by Tetr. arvernense (s. Ill. 7): its cheek teeth are so strongly filled with accessory cusps, that the chewing surface, when in a worn condition, compares with an irregularly rough file, as for the pig. The tusks of the lower jaw had been reduced to rudiments or had entirely disappeared; whereas the mighty upper tusks, as today for the African elephant, were used for tearing out roots and for ploughing through the soil. The main support for feeding was provided by the large trunk, which probably reached the ground.

While the selection of a dry climate and, consequently, harder foods produced the types mentioned above, we see a second line under the influence of damper, juicier food with a very different form of grinding teeth developing from Tetr. pygmaeum.

A species, which superficially looks much like Tetr. angustidens, is Tetr. tapiroides, and it blossomed alongside the first named. it did not develop the accessory cusps; its cheek teeth are much more characterized by their distinction, as the name means, tapir-like separation between ridge and valley. This trait developed in the context of an environmental alteration to the whole habitat and, from Tetr. longirostre and Tetr. arvernense, the same transformation becomes ever more pronounced.

While all these developments were underway, the geographic range increased markedly. Tetr. angustidens reached India, where it developed into an analogue of Tetr. arvernense, and it entered America, where its descendants also came to richly populate the northern continent. At the same time, the last shoot of the Tetr. tapiroides lineage, Tetr. americanum, reached into the north of the New World via Russia and the Aleutian Islands, and found rich food and accommodation on the plains.

If we introduce the deinotherians, typical of Europe with their peculiar deviant construction of the skull, then we have all the probiscan diversity from the recent Tertiary until the appearance of the genuine elephants.

Originally small and inconspicuous, they rapidly increased in both number and size, and provide the characteristic animal of the recent Tertiary fauna, and some representatives reached extraordinary dimensions.

At the end of the Pliocene begins a constant spread and radiation of the genuine elephants, the history of which will be addressed below, and the retreat of the mastodons and deinotherians. The latter had already died out at the end of the Pliocene with the monstrous Deinotherium gigantissimum, whose back stood at a height of almost 5m; the European and Asian mastodons disappeared along with it. In contrast, M. americanum persisted into the Pleistocene, and provided an object of keen hunting for Diluvian people.

The great period of aridity in the Lower Pliocene allowed the American descendants of Tetr. angustidens to reach South America, as a landbridge appeared in the area of modern day Panama, and they survived as two species into the Diluvian, one in the mountains and one on the plains.

Also at this time occurred a general drought in India, and mastodon species appeared, probably descendants from Tetr. pygmaeum-like forms, which underwent the already twice presented transformations of the tusks and trunk-cheek teeth, but in an entirely different way: the cusps, from which the ridges were composed, became uniform and increased in number, and the same happened for the ridges; cement piled up in the valleys. With this stage, Tetr. latidens, the start of the development of the lamella tooth had been reached, and such teeth are found in all extant elephants. And now that development proceeded quickly. The cusps and the ridges increased in number, and the intermediate cement became ever thicker; the crown expanded at the expense of the root. All these adaptations are consequences of a constant increase in the dryness of foodstuff; the progressive transformation resulted in a final type with an originally rough grinding surface, as for the transitional elephant Stegodon, and continued to the more advanced form of E. planifrons, the first true elephant and ancestor of all later ones. The four illustrations (s. Ill. 4 Figs. 3-6) provide an idea of the transformationary processes just described in a life-like manner.

Having overcome the main difficulty -so to say- of developing from the mastodon to the first true elephant, we reach the individual species, and how they rapidly evolved under the influences of their migrations. E. planifrons, a native of India, wandered socially over South Russia to Europe. It arrived in our area in the Middle Pliocene, and developed into the Southern elephant in South Europe, E. meridionalis, during the Upper Pliocene (still alongside of Tetr. arvernense), and it populated our land in great herds.

The steppe vegetation of the later Pliocene appears to have further fostered the increase in tooth lophs and the height of the crown, as adaptations for the improved grinding of plant parts and a fuller exploitation of the potential nourishment. Its immediate descendant, E. trogontherii, is characterised by the higher number of 16-24 lophs on the final molar (compared with 13 to 15 for E. meridionalis and 12-13 for E. planifrons. It led immediately to the mammoth (E. primigenius) and the highest number of lops of all elephants (20 to 29 on the last molar). Again, we can follow the interaction of the organism and environment with this lineage.

A high growth of the crown and an increase in the number of lophs, go hand in hand with the emancipation from softer food in exchange for a preference for drier, water poorer grasses. The final stage of the mammoth, which lived during the Ice Age, was often forced to prefer the sparse vegetation offered by steppe and tundra, and reacted with a file of significant height and, consequently, a longer time until erosion: an absolutely ideal form for an animal in that environment.

Trogontherian elephants and mammoths are another pair of mobile globetrotters. Not only did they settle across the whole of Europe and Asia, but also America. E. primigenius arrived in North America after E. trogontherii had already given rise to a mammoth-like elephant with giant, lyre-shaped tusks, the E. columbi. Both the Columbus mammoth and the true mammoth shared the extensive areas of the New World.

Another lineage emerged alongside the ancestral one. The homeland loyal Planifrons elephant herds provided a southern elephant much like the original form, E. hysudricus. This is the parent of the extant Indian elephant still in the land of origin. The cousin relationship with the mammoth, and the stable climatic conditions of India, make it understandable for us, that an original form could persist over the time.

And other herds of the ancestors produced yet another species showing a mix of characteristics, which bring us near to the giant primitive elephant, E. antiquus, of Africa which, from the end of the Pliocene, occurred ever more commonly in Europe.

This is E. priscus. Still in Southern Europe, this gave rise to the Diluvian forerunner of the African elephant (E. africanus fossilis); it and also its ancestors wandered across the Mediterranean landbridge, which had appeared during the Pliocene, to Africa, where the last branch has endured until the present day.

At the time of this migration, the emergence of elephants from E. priscus had already occurred; it also tried to migrate, but appears to have failed to reach the other shore as a consequence of renewed flooding. The result of that was that two species were isolated on the islands created, and incest led to dwarf races degenerated down to the size of donkeys. (Additional note: Apologies for the interruption, but being small for an elephant makes much sense on an island, and appears to have nothing to do with 'degeneration'. The limited amounts of food available encouraged the large to drop dead from starvation, and that impaired their breeding prospects.) Their remains are found in great numbers in the caves of Sicily, Malta, Cyprus and Crete.

Things turned out very differently for the original elephant that had settled the continent in large herds. While the remaining descendants of E. priscus did not increase the number of tooth lophs, or only slightly (as with the African, with 13 on its final molar), a fact which has its causes in the tropical vegetation of the environment, the original continental elephant increased the number significantly and developed, due to similarities of the chewing apparatus, into a dangerous opponent of the mammoth.

In impressive quantities it migrated from Europe back into the elephant homelands of India, and from there it reached China and Japan.

This was not only the largest elephant, but it was also the largest land animal of all time. (Additional note: I presume the author used Tier to mean 'mammal'. In any case, larger extinct mammals were subsequently found; Indricotherium comes to mind.) Its back had a height of 5m, and its elongated tusks also had the length of 5 m and, at their bases, a diameter of over 40cm.

It survived, along with the mammoth, into the late Diluvian, and offered early people a welcome but dangerous hunting target.

Our film has run out of time! The comic and amusing giant behind the iron bars that caught our attention has, to some extent, disappeared! Indeed! Who else has ancestors, grandfathers and cousins such as these, who else can look back on such an honourable past and can claim such a renowned heyday-?

And again E. indicus beats back with its trunk, leans on its front legs, lets its begging eyes wander from left to right and from right to left, and its glance is full of pathos.

An incurable, involuntary comedian, this giant with its 'enormous past'.

An index of more of my translations of old Kosmos articles can be found at:

Kosmos Translations Archive

A number of Mesozoic (and post-Mesozoic) location summaries can be found at Localities.