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Straight-tusked elephants were the largest land mammals of the Pleistocene epoch, present in Europe and western Asia between 800,000 and 100,000 years ago.These animals had a very wide head and extremely long tusks, and were roughly three times larger than that of living Asian elephants, twice that of African ones, and also much larger than woolly mammoths.Estimates of maximum shoulder height vary from 3 to 4.2 m (10-14 feet) and body mass from 4.5 to 13 tons for females and males, respectively."We have estimated that the meat and fat supplied by the body of an adult Palaeoloxodon antiquus bull would...

...an international research team led by scientists from the University of Tübingen and the Senckenberg Center for Human Evolution and Paleoenvironment presents the earliest human footprints known from Germany. The tracks were discovered in the roughly 300,000-year-old Schöningen Paleolithic site complex in Lower Saxony. The footprints, presumably from Homo heidelbergensis, are surrounded by several animal tracks—collectively, they present a picture of the ecosystem at that time.In an open birch and pine forest with an understory of grasses sits a lake, a few kilometers long and several hundred meters wide. On its muddy shores, herds of elephants, rhinoceroses, and even-toed ungulates...