Scientists have for the first time measured how fast large-scale evolution can occur in mammals, showing it takes 24 million generations for a mouse-sized animal to evolve to the size of an elephant.

University of Michigan paleontologist Bill Sanders examines a 4.5-million-year-old Loxodonta adaurora skull from an early Pliocene-age excavation in Kenya Credit: Bill Sanders In 2013, paleontologist ...

A hefty set of tusks is usually an advantage for elephants, allowing them to dig for water, strip bark for food and joust with other elephants. But during episodes of intense ivory poaching, those big ...

Elephants and their forebears were pushed into wipeout by waves of extreme global environmental change, rather than overhunting by early humans, according to new research. The study, published today ...

A new study published by a team of international researchers found that a now-extinct species of dwarf elephant halved in height and shrank by nearly 85 per cent body mass on the island of Sicily. The ...

But culling the animals with the largest tusks may be causing a shift in the evolution of wild elephant populations. Scientists fear that this change could result in more of the elephants being born ...

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A new study suggests that severe ivory poaching in parts of Mozambique has led to the evolution of tuskless elephants. The study published in Science magazine found that in Gorongosa National Park a ...

An extinct species of dwarf elephant halved in height and shrank by almost 85% in body mass over a period of just 350,000 years after evolving from one of the largest land mammals that ever lived, ...

Scientists discovered this ancient elephant fossil on the island of Sicily. They said the elephant shrunk rapidly over a million years because of the constraints of the island. The tiny elephant, and ...