A landowner digging his olive grove in eastern Crete didn't know what to make of the strange-looking bones in the bedrock. But his pique was understandable. Ancient Greeks thought they were proof that giant Cyclopes roamed the earth, while Nikos Merabeliotakis thought they were fossilized hooves.
The bones turned out to be the teeth of an enormous creature that paleontologists didn't know existed so far south in Europe. The kilo-each molars, along with a few vertebrae, ribs and, most spectacularly, a tusk, were from an elderly and long extinct Deinotherium giganteum - the second-largest mammal ever to walk the earth. The gargantuan, elephant-like creature, whose tusks extended downward from the lower jaw, was three times the size of today's elephants.
Many Greeks are reluctant to announce discoveries of ancient and prehistoric relics, because the archaeological society may prohibit or delay construction if the site is deemed to be of national importance. Merabeliotakis found the fossils in 1997, but he didn't tell anyone until last summer.
Nonetheless, Iraklio Natural History Museum paleontologist and university professor Haralambos Fassoulas was understandably ecstatic over the discovery. The Miocene epoch animal, which had a 1.4-meter (4.5 ft) tusk, lived seven-to-nine million years ago and likely died of old age. "It's one of the oldest mammal fossils we've found in Crete," said Fassoulas, "and it's a big discovery as it proves the animal to be more widespread than we thought," he said. "We knew only about the most recent Pleistocene age elephants of about 500,000 years ago."
Pre-historic swim
The find proves that now arid Crete, once a string of smaller islands, was also lush and tropical - the only habitat that could sustain the animal. The island is the last landmass before Africa, which has a different species. Fassoulas thinks the creature swam from Turkey via what are now the southeast Aegean islands of Karpathos and Rhodes, which were then still attached to Asia Minor. "All vegetarian animals can swim," he explained.
Scientists speculate that this "bizarre and ultra-conservative proboscidean" decreased in size and eventually became extinct because of a dwindling food supply that was quite specific. Hominid interference after our ancestors emerged five million years ago is also believed to have contributed to its demise.
There is also debate as to what the beast actually looked like. Scientists from Sofia Natural History Museum argued at a symposium in Rome that Deinotherium giganteum's long elephantine nose is exaggerated, and that it was actually more pig- or tapir -like. Conventional wisdom has it looking more like an elephant, which is more familiar and appealing to the general public.
Some believe the ancient Greeks found fossils of the creatures and from them conjured the myths of Titans, monsters and Cyclopes, the supposed eye socket formed from a lost tusk. For his part, Fassoulas plans to look for the giant's skull, but admits he isn't hopeful. "The northern area doesn't exist now," he says. "It's under water."
