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Articles on Elephants

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A Bohemian waxwing eating mountain ash berries. Lisa Hupp, USFWS/Flickr

With fewer animals to spread their seeds, plants could have trouble adapting to climate change

Forests around the world will need to shift their ranges to adapt to climate change. But many trees and plants rely on animals to spread their seeds widely, and those partners are declining.
4.5 million-year-old cranium of the fossil elephant Loxodonta adaurora, from Ileret, Kenya, in right lateral and front views. Figure courtesy of Carol Abraczinskas, University of Michigan Museum of Paleontology

A fossil cranium from Kenya tells the story of an extinct elephant species

The anatomy of the teeth in the cranium and its bones show that it belongs to an extinct cousin of the living African savanna and forest elephants.
Tim – one of the last big tusker elephants – died last year at the age of 50, in Amboseli National Park, Kenya. From the author

Curious Kids: why do elephants have tusks?

Elephants use their giant incisors to dig holes, impress rivals and rest weary trunks. But as so many continue to be killed for their ivory, he question is whether they are destined to be tuskless.
Rosewood, the name for several endangered tree species that make beautiful furniture, being loaded in Madagascar. Pierre-Yves Babelon/Shutterstock

Restricting trade in endangered species can backfire, triggering market booms

For decades nations have worked to curb international sales of endangered plants and animals. But in countries like China, with high demand and speculative investors, that strategy fuels bidding wars.
Mammoths went extinct tens of thousands of years ago, but trade in their ivory is threatening their living elephant cousins. EPA/FREDERICK VON ERICHSEN

Why we need to protect the extinct woolly mammoth

Melting Siberian permafrost is exposing long-dead mammoths, creating a new trade in mammoth ivory.

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