[/caption]Recently, scientists have discovered a new species of elephant. It's not an entirely new discovery as we've seen them around, however, the discovery that it's a different species is quite new information. On Tuesday a paper was published in the PLoS Biology scientific journal that shows that African elephants are two species that separated millions of years ago.
"A surprising finding from our study is that the divergence of African savanna and forest elephants -- which some have argued to be two populations of the same species -- is about as ancient as the divergence of Asian elephants and mammoths," according to the authors, who are made up of researchers from the United States, United Kingdom and Germany. "Given their ancient divergence, we conclude that African savanna and forest elephants should be classified as two distinct species."
Modern savanna or bush elephants weigh about twice as much as their relatives that live in forests. They also have significantly different body shapes. The savanna breed stands almost a meter taller than the forest elephants.
This seems like something that would be pretty obvious to scientists, however, such a discovery is in actuality pretty hard to make. It called for mitochondrial DNA analysis to prove that forest elephants can now be known as Loxodonta cyclotis and savanna elephants will be known as Loxodonta Africana.
You can read the study here.
The lead author of the paper, David Reich said, "We'll need to rewrite some basic biology textbooks." Reich is also a geneticist with Havard Medical School.
The two species can, and have, interbred, however researchers have said that such pairings are rare in the wild. Also, hybrids produced in such matings usually don't pass on their genes.
The reason for this may be that the hybrid males are smaller than their savanna relatives. Elephant females usually only mate with the largest bulls. This leaves the two populations distinctly separate.
Via, CNN
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