Indricotherium, the largest land mammal that ever lived as far as we know, must have been an impressive sight as it browsed among the trees of the early Miocene landscape of central Asia. Back then it didn't have a scientific name, though, as taxonomists had yet to evolve, and that was probably just as well as there is a bit of a muddle over the moniker of this animal. Although it is sometimes called "Baluchitherium", the name Paraceratherium has priority as it referred to the remains of the same animal. On top of that, the creature I've referred to here as Indricotherium was called Baluchitherium grangeri, the older name again taking priority. This distinction might not even be real, though, as Indricotherium could be synonymous with Paraceratherium, genus differences possibly being little more than differences in body size or sexual dimorphism. Unfortunately for paleontologists, the remains found that represent these genera are often sparse, making it difficult to make comparisons and resolve this issue.
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Earlier this year I´ve seen a life-sized reconstruction of Indricotherium ( http://bestiarium.kryptozoologie.net/artikel/bild-des-tages-indricother… ), but I have to say it was much lesser impressive than I had imagined. It is really very big, but as a result of the long neck and legs it looks more like a very large horse. The life-sized giant mammoth of the exhibition looked much more impressive, because it was much more massive.
Nice picture, Brian. That's one of my favorite displays in the AMNH fossil halls, with the synapsid fossils supported by armatures that restore their outline in life...
Sordes; Indrioctherium does look a little bit plain compared to a giraffe, but perhaps that's because it's often painted grey to connect it with its rhino relatives. It doesn't quite look like anything else, but then again it doesn't have features that draw the eye, either, so I guess that's why it's not a favorite.
Matt; I liked that section as well, although I'm sure a full mounted skeleton of Indricotherium would be even more impressive! (First we need the bones, though)
I was under the impression that Indricotherium was known from fairly complete remains, but it sounds like that's not the case. :-(
And it's really not very big. I don't think it would look out of place in modern Africa, in fact. Wierd skull, though. This bugger must've had one heckuva lower lip!
Zach; Maybe you're right; here is a nearly complete reconstruction. Information about these animals is hard to track down in general, so I don't really know how complete the remains are (or how many individuals are known). As you can see from the picture, though, the AMNH skull replicas are based on incomplete material, probably collected by Barnum Brown in India (the book I Married a Dinosaur by his wife mentions looking for Indricotherium).
"It is really very big, but as a result of the long neck and legs it looks more like a very large horse"
Holy crap, it actually kind of does...
Indricotheres are still considered hyracodont rhinos, right? I believe those were pretty horselike to begin with.
And now the whole talk about how indricotheres sort of resemble giant horses has gotten me speculating about indricothere war mounts. Ha! Makes war elephants seem puny in comparison.
Still, if time travel is ever possible a la Prehistoric Park, I really would like to see what sort of enclosure would be built to contain an indricothere. =)
Oh, and by the way, modern elephants are big, but I wonder if many people are aware of the great size achieved by some of the other proboscidean species; notably the deinotheres, and some of the mammoths, PalaeoloxodonElephas species.
> has gotten me speculating about indricothere
> war mounts. Ha! Makes war elephants seem puny
> in comparison.
Hai~Ren,
some animals that might have rivalled indricotheres in bulk and weight, if not for size and height, might have survived long enough for domestication, or at least taming. *Stegodon* survived into the late neolithic/early bronze age (see here:http://scienceblogs.com/tetrapodzoology/2007/03/war_rhinos.php and go down in the comment section). Most people associate *Stegodon* with the dwarf island forms, but the full-sized mainland Stegos were humoungous. Like most mastodons, they were longer and lower built than modern elephants, but even so a large bull cold reach a height of 3 meters and a length of over 6 meters, not counting the additional 3 meters of tusks. As they were clearly social animals - the tusks of the old bulls were so wide and so closely spaced together that the trunk did not fit between them, thus making feeding without cooperation by other members of the herd very difficult - it must have been possible to tame them.
Ha, war-indricotheres! Mûmakils rulez!
But to stay respectable it would be really interesting to know if early south-american civilizations actually did tame mastodonts as some ancient artwork could indicate.
But I really don´t think that the orientation of the teeth in some stegodonts had anything to do with social cooperation. They were surely able to eat alone, it is really impossible that they were fed by other members of the herd, especially if old males were like modern elephants solitary.
But to come again on extinct mammals which could be used at war, entelodonts would still be among the coolest of alls.
> They were surely able to eat alone
Able yes, but it would have been pretty awkward, requiring a sideways movement around the tusks with the trunk.
> especially if old males were like modern elephants solitary.
Again, perfectly possible, but we can't rule out the possibility that the social structure of *Stegodon* was different. After all, it shared its habitat with *Elephas* for several hundred thousands, if not millions of years, so some differences must have been there to minimize competition.
That different sexes have a different role in a herd, pack or pride is not uncommon in mammals, lions are a good example: Females hunt, males defend the pride (of course, this structure is flexible, males can hunt if they are on their own or if the only available prey is very large and dangerous).
> But to come again on extinct mammals which could
> be used at war, entelodonts would still be among
> the coolest of alls.
If humans and entelodonts would have ever met, I think it would have been an "us or them" situation, leaving little room for cooperation or domestication. In fact, if the entelodonts were as fertile as modern pigs, and the humans were a pre-industrial society, the entelodonts would have had a fair chance of winning. I guess we are just to similar in our general destructiveness...(sigh)
Well, feeding other members in a social structure can work among carnivores and perhaps to a distinct degrees at omnivores, but surely not in herbivores which need nearly the whole day to consume hundreds of pounds of plant material. It could not work only for logistic reasons (sometimes paleontologists have very strange ideas...). Furthermore, what would make more work for a stegodont, to curl its trunk around its tusk to eat, or that another stegodont had to take every piece of plants with its trunk to give it the other stegodont? I looked also for stegodon skulls already a long time ago, and actually really most of them had surely no problems with their tusks.
Well, feeding other members in a social structure can work among carnivores and perhaps to a distinct degrees at omnivores, but surely not in herbivores which need nearly the whole day to consume hundreds of pounds of plant material. It could not work only for logistic reasons (sometimes paleontologists have very strange ideas...). Furthermore, what would make more work for a stegodont, to curl its trunk around its tusk to eat, or that another stegodont had to take every piece of plants with its trunk to give it the other stegodont? I looked also for stegodon skulls already a long time ago, and actually really most of them had surely no problems with their tusks.
> It could not work only for logistic reasons
This sounds reasonable, but has anyone ever done the math? Some birds are clearly able to feed themselves, their partner and their offspring during nesting season in spite of being herbivores and having a very active metabolism, but admittedly they are in a different weight class.
> I looked also for stegodon skulls already a long
> time ago, and actually really most of them had
> surely no problems with their tusks.
You have a point here; only the very large and very old bulls had the oversized tusks - but of course those are the ones that are most often illustrated or mounted in a museum, because they are the most sensational and striking examples.
Well, in contrast to elephants which mainly consume plant material with a very low energy-content, most birds consume energy-richt plant material. And even the hatchlings of most herbivorous birds need big amounts of nutrient-rich food at the beginning.
To come back to the crux of my original comment, *Stegodon*, regardless of its feeding habits, was in all probability a social animal, like most, if not all proboscidans. Social animals are, as a rule of the thumb, more easily tamable than solitary ones. The youngest known remains of *Stegodon* are about 4000 years old (+/- 200 years), about contemporary with the first archaeological evidence of elephants tamed - not truly domesticated, because they did not reproduce in captivity - by humans, and their use in warfare. So a use of *Stegodon* beside or instead of *Elephas* in warfare might have been possible. The problem is that written sources either don't exist or are, in the case of the Harappan script, not yet deciphered.
Something different but related: You surely all know the two huge indian elephants which were thought to be stegodons, but turned out to be only huge asian elephants. Now both of them are dead, killed by poachers.
The fabled Beasts of Bardia? Aw shucks... =(
> Now both of them are dead, killed by poachers.
There were only two of them? I always thought there was an - albeit small - population. Anyway, these are very sad news :-(. These were neither stegodons nor elephants that re-evolved atavistic *Stegodon* traits as a result of inbreeding, as English Wikipedia has claimed (sic!), but they were magnificent animals in their own right.
Sad that it came this way.