Proboscidea is the mammalian lineage containing living elephants and their extinct relatives. Its fossil diversity includes many combinations of tusk, tooth and skull form. The modern elephant body plan represents one surviving part of that history.
The Asian elephant, Elephas maximus, is a living member of Proboscidea. Its trunk combines sensing, manipulation and breathing in one flexible structure, illustrating how one anatomical organ can support several coordinated functions.
An extinct proboscidean lineage with extensive fossil and genomic evidence. Ancient genomes show that morphological groupings can conceal distinct and admixed ancestry histories. [ref]
Million-year-old DNA sheds light on the genomic history of mammoths by Tom van der Valk and others. Nature 591, pp. 265–269; Early Pleistocene genomes and hybrid ancestry of Columbian mammoths
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