In 1904, some remarkable elephant fossils were unearthed on Cape
Malekas on the island of Crete by Dorothea Bate, a famous fossil
hunter. Some of these fossils appeared to be from a mammoth, a
group of elephants that are distinct from those we now know.
Mammoths differ from the other elephants in a number of ways,
such as having long and gracefully curved tusks instead of
straight tusks and a domed skull instead of a flat head. But for
many years, all dwarf elephant fossils found on Mediterranean
islands, including these from Crete, were thought to be
descendants of the mainland straight-tusked elephant,
Palaeoloxodon antiquus. Indeed, this European elephant was the
ancestor of nearly all other extinct dwarf elephants found on a
number of Mediterranean islands including Sicily, Malta and
Cyprus. But not everyone in the scientific community was
convinced that the Bate fossils were from Palaeoloxodon
elephants. Fossil elephant researcher, Victoria Herridge, at the
Natural History Museum in London, wanted to lea