New Evidence Of Elephants In The Book Of Mormon?

[consiglieri]

Cheek pinchingly cute!

I'm sure you mean that in a nice way.

[katherine the great]

I'm sure you mean that in a nice way.

Is there an "un" nice way to mean it?

[Zakuska]

Ok... Im having trouble attaching the scaned page images...

Here is the relevant paragraphs that I scanned and ocr'ed...

Cuvieronius was named for the great French paleontologist and founder of comparative anatomy, Baron George Cuvier (1769-1832). A fairly small gomnphothere, Cuvieronius' most remarkable feature was its tusks, which were spirally twisted like those of a narwhal.

We do not usually associate the South American Continent with elephants. However, remains of Cuvieronius have been found in mountainous areas of Norrh and South Arnerica, a fact reflected in its synonym Cordillerion - 'the one from the mountain range'. Cuvieronius evolved in western North America at the end of the Miocene, and migrated to South America during Pleistocene times, around 2 Million years ago. It spread from the grassy pampas in the east to the heights of the Andes in the west:, reaching as far south as Argentina. It was hunted to extinction, and probably died out as recently as AD 400.

The book appears to be a pictoral survey of the various animals that scientists have discovered and recorded their remains. While far from a scientific Journal... it represents the best scientific/paleological hypothesis of when these animals went extinct.

[consiglieri]

So how small is "fairly small"?

Thanks for getting the reference, Zak!

All the Best!

--Consiglieri

Is there an "un" nice way to mean it?

To your credit, it is obvious your mind does not reside in the gutter like mine.

[Zakuska]

"Fairly Small" is still the size of a Modern Elephant.

Page 239

Page 240

Page 241 <- Looks just like a modern Elephant!

[cdowis]

I saw on PBS a few years ago (so it must be true) that pygmy mammoths survived on Wrangell Island in the Arctic until 4000 BC. Not Mesoamerica, by a long shot, but not 11,000 BC either.

Off the coast of California, around 11k BC.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pygmy_Mammoth

And the reference for your post:

" Arctic tundra on Wrangel IslandWrangel Island is a breeding ground for polar bears (having the highest density of dens in the world), seals, and lemmings. During the summer it is visited by many types of birds.

Woolly mammoths survived there until 1700 BC, the most recent survival of all known mammoth populations. However, due to limited food supply, they were much smaller in size than typical mammoths."

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wrangel_Island

[Zakuska]

Here is some information on Baron Cuvier:

http://www.victorianweb.org/science/cuvier.html

Heres more on the Cuvieronius:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cuvieronius

Cuvieronius is an extinct New World genus of gomphothere.

Cuvieronius is named after the French naturalist Georges Cuvier, stood 2.7m (9 ft) tall and looked like a modern elephant except for its spiral-shaped tusks. The creature initially evolved in North America, but was also one of the few proboscid mammals to colonize South America[1] during the Great American Interchange (the only others being two species of the genus Stegomastodon, also gomphotheres), reaching there around 2 million years ago and traveling as far south as Argentina. Cuvieronius have been found in association with man, and pieces of its hide and muscle tissue have been found in Chile: â??The site has also yielded 38 small pieces of animal hide and muscle tissue, some still preserved on bones of Cuvieronius. Pieces of hide also were recovered from hearth areas, living floors, and wooden structural remains. Some pieces were still attached to wooden poles, possible suggesting the presence of hide-draped huts. Pathological and other analyses of these pieces suggest that they are also of a Proboscidean.â?[2] South American fossils formerly attributed to Mastodon or Mammut are now believed to be Cuvieronius. The related Stegomastodon occupied warmer, lower-altitude habitats in South America, while the smaller C. hyodon occupied cooler, higher-altitude Andean habitats.[1] Cuvieronius was a mixed feeder, and has been dated at least as recently as 9,100 B.P. in South America.[3]

1^ a b Prado, J. L.; Alberdi, M. T.; Azanza, B.; S

[Zakuska]

I say we've positively found our Jaradite Elephants... and possibly our horses tooo!

Read this...

New Cuvieronius finds from the Pleistocene of Central Mexico

These remains included isolated teeth and a lower jaw of Equus, postcranial remains and lower molars of Mammuthus, a tooth and dermal ossicles of a mylodontid edentate, and glyptodont scutes. This faunal association indicates a Pleistocene age for the assemblage.

The dental features observed on the Rancho Gerardo material are characteristic both Haplomastodon and Cuvieronius, which are distinguished by the shape of the upper tusks and the presence or absence of a band of enamel on the upper tusks. In addition, the shape of the symphyseal region is distinctive (Ficcarelli et al., 1995). In Haplomastodon the upper tusks are enamel-free. They are upward curving and oval in cross section. Cuvieronius possesses a slightly downturned symphyseal region and upper tusks that are twisted in a long open spiral and with a spiral band of enamel persisting in the adults (Ficcarelli et al., 1995). The material from Puebla is assigned to the genus Cuvieronius on the basis of the downturned the symphyseal region and the band of enamel on the upper tusk.

The genus Cuvieronius had also been reported from several countries in Central America: El Salvador (Stirton and Gealey, 1949; Webb and Perrigo, 1984), Nicaragua (Espinoza, 1976), Guatemala (Woodburne, 1969), Panama (Gazin, 1957), and Honduras (Leidy, 1859). Laurito-Maura (1988) and Lucas et al. (1997) reported the species C. hyodon from several Pleistocene localities in Costa Rica.

Ficcarelli et al. (1995) discussed the South American mastodons and analysed the complex validity of the species of the genera Haplomastodon and Cuvieronius. After reviewing all the nomenclatural problems of both genera they revived the species tarijensis for Cuvieronius and elevated the Cuvieronius assemblage from Tarija, Bolivia to topotypic material. This is the most representative sample of Cuvieronius in South America. Following their proposal the geographic and temporal distribution of Cuvieronius (=C. tarijensis) was from the upper Pliocene to Pleistocene of Central America and limited to the middle Pleistocene in the Andean and adjacent regions of lower elevation to the south. They did not consider any of the Mexican species of Cuvieronius in their study. Review of the diagnosis of C. tarijensis does not distinguish it from the Mexican species C. tropicus and C. oligobunis.

Discoveries of gomphotheres in Mexico date from the middle of the last century. Despite this long history, the diversity of the group is practically unknown. The gomphotheres were present in Mexico since at least the Barstovian land mammal age, represented by the genus Gomphotherium (Ferrusquia Villafranca, 1990). In addition, Rhynchotherium had been recorded there in Hemphillian faunas (Carranza-Castaneda and Miller, 1984). Most of the records of the genus Cuvieronius lack geographic and stratigraphic information and, as a consequence, the age assignments other than Plio-Pleistocene are uncertain.

This is the first record of Cuvieronius in Mexico where postcranial material is associated; the presence of lower jaws of individuals of different ages, will allow consideration of variations.

Although here I prefer to assign the material to C. tropicus, a detailed and critical revision of all the species described for Mexico (C. tropicus and C. oligobunis) and Central America (C. hyodon) is mandatory for understanding the history, distribution, and diversity of this proboscidean.

[Zakuska]

List of American extinctions from the Holocene (10000 BP) to present...

Cuvieronius, Florida and Arizona, 400 AD

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_extinct_animals_(USA)

This matches the drawing in the Palmer book...

http://www.pbase.com/floridageologicalsurvey/image/64770649

[MAsh]

Ok... Im having trouble attaching the scaned page images...

Here is the relevant paragraphs that I scanned and ocr'ed...

The book appears to be a pictoral survey of the various animals that scientists have discovered and recorded their remains. While far from a scientific Journal... it represents the best scientific/paleological hypothesis of when these animals went extinct.

Is there a footntoe or source for Palmer's claim?

Mike

[Zakuska]

Its not palmers claim... it seems to be the scientific consensus.

Check the links ive been providing. We've got a carbon date of 9100 BP in Argentina. Im trying to find the information on the extinctions in Florida and Arizona.

http://jpaleontol.geoscienceworld.org/cgi/...ourcetype=HWFIG

[Zakuska]

Excellent Article on the "mass extinctions"...

Abstract Toward the end of the Pleistocene, North America lost some 35 genera of mammals. It has long been assumed that all or virtually all of the extinctions occurred between 12,000 and 10,000 years ago, but detailed analyses of the radiocarbon chronology provide little support for this assumption, which seems to have been widely accepted because of the kinds of explanations felt most likely to account for the extinctions in the first place. Approaches that attribute the losses to human predation depend almost entirely on the assumed synchroneity between the extinctions and the onset of large mammal hunting by North American peoples. The fact that only two of the extinct genera have been found in a convincing kill context presents an overwhelming problem for this approach. Climatic models, on the other hand, are becoming increasingly precise and account for a wide variety of apparently synchronous biogeographic events. While a role for human activities in the extinction of some taxa is fully possible, there can be little doubt that the underlying cause of the extinctions lies in massive climatic change.

http://www.springerlink.com/content/h73048940x136163/

Did you notice that all the "assumptions" where wrong, Except for a couple cases?!

Intresting tib-bit about C14 dating...

While Australia’s extinct megafauna disappeared on the edge of the 40 thousand-year “window” in which radiocarbon dating is effective, the New World’s “Serengetis” of big animals and birds became extinct well inside that window – near the start, to be more precise, of the “Younger Dryas” cold phase some 12,870 “calendar,” or 11,200 “radiocarbon” years ago.

Let’s talk briefly – before we return to the issue of when North America’s megafaunal extinction took place – about why the radiocarbon date I’ve mentioned in the preceding paragraph is so far out of step with the calendar or “real” date it represents.

Radiocarbon dating is based on the assumption that the amount of C14 in the atmosphere remains constant. That assumption doesn’t hold in the real world. Variations in the Earth’s magnetic field, and in cosmic background radiation, affect the rate at which C14 is being “manufactured” in the atmosphere. The big, back-and-forth lurches in temperature that took place near the end of the last glaciation muddied the picture further, by causing sudden and relatively large variations in the ratio of C12 to C14 in the atmosphere. Those variations make time, as measured by radiocarbon dating, appear to speed up, slow down and even run backward for brief intervals. We’re dependent, therefore, on data gleaned from lake sediments, annual precipitation layers in ancient ice, tree-ring sequences and other dating methods to produce “calibrated” or “calendar” dates from the radiocarbon results.

All the dates mentioned in this book are, unless I’ve indicated otherwise, expressed in calibrated or calendar rather than in radiocarbon years.

http://www.megafauna.com/chapter5.htm

[Grothar]

Great I have a new word for the day, Gomphotheres.

I always found the concept of Elephant-esque creatures in the Americas as funny, but God has made far stranger things happen.

[hagoth7]

...We've got a carbon date of 9100 BP in Argentina...

Pardon my ignorance. What does "BP" mean?

[Notquitewetyet]

Pardon my ignorance. What does "BP" mean?

Before Present. Present is defined as 1950 ad.

[MAsh]

Its not palmers claim... it seems to be the scientific consensus.

Check the links ive been providing. We've got a carbon date of 9100 BP in Argentina. Im trying to find the information on the extinctions in Florida and Arizona.

http://jpaleontol.geoscienceworld.org/cgi/...ourcetype=HWFIG

Thanks, Zakuska. This is very helpful.

Mike

[Zakuska]

Here is a little bit on New Mexico Finds of Cuvieronius.

http://www.jstor.org/pss/4524020

[sdrencure]

My first attempt at posting -- hope I know what I'm doing...

Per the 400 date for the Cuvieronius (Gomphothere) -- I spent many hours researching that earlier this year. I found nothing and believe it to be Wikipedia fiction that then got picked up and reported elsewhere -- but if anyone can find an original source on the 400 date, I would be greatly appreciative! (sdrencure@yahoo.com)

P.S. An article will be published next year that will very surprisingly and definitively solve the Jaredite elephant, so help is on the way...

[MAsh]

P.S. An article will be published next year that will very surprisingly and definitively solve the Jaredite elephant, so help is on the way...

Where will the article be published so we can look for it?

[Ipso Facto]

I just noticed this thread today. (I don't check in that often, so I missed its genesis.) I find it extremely fascinating, and I wish to commend Zakuska for his diligent research in the last few weeks. You have turned up a very interesting find, and one that I believe has eluded its potential connections to the Book of Mormon simply because the genus is (apparently) almost universally referred to by the terms cuvieronius and gomphothere, rather than something like elephant or mastadon.

What a formidable creature this appears to be!

Enamel-covered spiral tusks, pointing straight ahead. Nine feet tall! Apparently extremely muscular.

I guess this could very well mean that another Book of Mormon claim becomes just that much more plausible ...

[Zakuska]

Charles Darwin is our friend...

The huge rodent head from near Mercedes was named Toxodon by Owen,[98] and he showed that the "enormous gnawing tooth" from the cliffs of the Carcara

[Zakuska]

Intresting observation by Darwin...

These species are all extinct: the six first were found by M. d'Orbigny and myself in the formations of the Rio Negro, S. Josef, and other parts of Patagonia; and therefore, as first observed by M. d'Orbigny, these beds certainly belong to the great Patagonian formation, which will be described in the ensuing chapter, and which we shall see must be considered as a very ancient tertiary one. North of the Bajada, M. d'Orbigny found, in beds which he considers as lying beneath the strata here described, remains of a Toxodon, which he has named as a distinct species from the T. Platensis of the Pampean formation. Much silicified wood is found on the banks of the Parana (and likewise on the Uruguay), and I was informed that they come out of these lower beds; four specimens collected by myself are dicotyledonous.

The upper half of the cliff, to a thickness of about thirty feet, consists of Pampean mud, of which the lower part is pale coloured, and the upper part of a brighter red, with some irregular layers of an arenaceous variety of tosca, and a few small concretions of the ordinary kind. Close above the marine limestone, there is a thin stratum with a concretionary outline of white hard tosca-rock or marl, which may be considered either as the uppermost bed of the inferior deposits, or the lowest of the Pampean formation; at one time I considered this bed as marking a passage between the two

* M. d'Orbigny has given (Voyage Part. G