It was not a nano elephant. It was a nano mammoth

On the left M. creticus compared to a modern elephant and a person. To the right, the evolutionary path proposed by DNA analysis: the blue line comes from the mammoths and the red elephants. Ed. Poulakis N

 

He measured a meter, lived 800,000 years ago in Crete and a hundred years ago they discovered his first fossil traces. Although some of the characteristics of the teeth found are mammoth, the animal was placed in the set of pygmy elephants of the Mediterranean. However, after the review of these fossils and another of the remains found last year, the researchers have come to the conclusion that it was really a curd, as reported in the journal Proceedings of the Royal Society. An analysis of DNA published in 2006 suggested the same.

The redenomination of Mamuthus creticus has automatically become the smallest mammoth species in history, an extreme example of nanism that occurs in the islands. The adult mammoths of this species had a size similar to that of the current newborn elephants.