Sicilian dwarf elephants stood no more than 1.8 metres tall and 1 metre at the shoulder

Sicilian dwarf elephants stood no more than 1.8 metres tall and 1 metre at the shoulder. They are believed to have descended from a population of a large-bodied species, as did certain other dwarf elephants and mammoths that lived locally on the islands of the Mediterranean. Normal, large elephants came to these lands during the Ice Age, when the sea level was much lower, and in time found themselves cut off from the mainland, in isolation. Over the millennia the giants shrank: by a few centimetres and a few hundredweight with each generation. Until they vanished altogether. Or perhaps they turned into utterly tiny little ones? (no) Broadly speaking, the disappearance of the mammoths is described in much the same way: they survived on the Pacific islands as animals of no great size until a few thousand years ago. I don't know about you, but I always feel sad looking at their tiny little skeletons, and at such touching sketches, with a little mother elephant and a teeny-tiny calf, I simply well up