Dwarf elephants are an extinct species of mammals. They are oft confused with the pygmy elephants that were a common sight in the fauna of South East Asia. The dwarf elephants of the Mediterranean lived in the Pleistocene period, which is approximately 10,000 years before our present day scenario.
What gives them their small size?
Insular dwarfism may be the primary cause for the size of these elephants. Insular dwarfism is a form of dwarfism, wherein the population’s gene pool gets limited to a very small environment. This is likely to happen on islands.
MEDITERRANEAN ISLANDS
Fossilized remains of this dwarfed form have been found on the Mediterranean islands; namely Cyprus, Malta, Crete, Sicily, Sardinia, the Cyclades Islands and the Dodecanese [...]