Platybelodon, the "Flat-Speared
Tusk," certainly attracts attention
with its intriguing incisors!
Platybelodon stood around two meters 
tall, approximately the same size as
modern Asian elephants. However, 
coming from the Gomphoteriidae 
family, it is not a true elephant
(no matter how much it looks like an
awkward cousin with an underbite).
Both elephants and gomphotheres tend 
to have the iconic trunks and tusks 
on their upper jaws; their lower jaws 
are where their differences are the 
most obvious. Platybelodon's lower 
jaw is broad, flat, and long like a 
shovel, and originally it was thought 
that it used this shovel-jaw to scoop 
up aquatic vegetation in swamps. 
Nowadays, scientists think that the
sharp, flat teeth at the end of the
jaw made a good surface for scraping
bark and sawing branches off of
trees.

This proud proboscidean lived in
the grassy Neogene savannas of 
Africa and Asia, where it sought out
enough vegetation to sustain its 
large body. Like its modern
relatives, Platybelodon likely had
few predators. However, some Platy-
belodon bones are preserved with 
bite marks from the giant shark 
Otodus megalodon! These bite marks 
indicate that either their carcasses 
washed out to sea and were scavenged
or that they occassionally went for
dangerous dips in the ocean.
