Washington-SANA
American paleontologists have discovered a tomb of the ancestors of extinct elephants known as "Gomfotheer", dating back about 5 million years, in the US state of Florida.
Sky News reported that the curator of vertebrate paleontology at the Florida Museum of Natural History Jonathan Bloch and his team discovered what could be some of the most complete skeletons of gumfother fossils, which he described as a lifetime finding.
The Florida Museum blog indicated that the skeleton is about two and a half meters long.
In an attempt to explain the presence of skeletons of a large number of the same animals in one site, the museum's director of vertebrate paleontology, Rachel Narducci, noted that members of one or several herds may have been stuck in this spot at different times.
Last year, the same team first found the remains of ancient elephants at the Monbrook Fossil Degg site in Levi County, Florida.
These animals share many traits with modern-day elephants, including proboscis and tusks, and the mammoths, who lived hundreds of thousands of years ago, are likely to be direct descendants of the gomphotheer.
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