Prehistoric Safari : Pliocene Southern Europe

From back to front:
Auvergne Mastodon(Anancus arvernensis), Scoppito Southern Mammoth(Mammuthus meridionalis), Steppe Rhino(Stephanorhinus hemitoechus), Stenon Zebra(Equus stenonis), Giant European Hippo(Hippopotamus major)

...Southern Europe in the latest Pliocene era, more than 2 million years ago...

The first global glaciation that would eventually lead to the periodic glacial-interglacial cycle began at the late Pliocene about 2.6 million years ago.
Main consequences of these initial Pliocene glaciations on mammalian communities were the establishment of the new intercontinental bridges and the overland dispersal of some significant taxa, most notably the entry of first true genera of both Mammuthus and Equus into Eurasia.

The southern mammoth was one of the first elephantids and probably the first mammoth to have ever settled in Europe. In spite of its dental pattern still being slightly less adapted to grazing tough grasses than in later mammoths, it already attained gigantic dimensions(about 4m high at the shoulders, weighing 11 tons on average (Asier Larramendi, 2012)) and scoppito specimens show highly advanced mammoth morphologies in the cranial.

Mammuthus soon made autochthonous Gomphotherid elephants obsolete and just as arrival of the stenon zebra coincided with disappearences of three toed Hipparion horses, eventually replaced Anancus.

This interglacial scene is intended to reflect that iconic faunal turnover known as 'the Mammuthus-Equus Event' that took place at the end of the Pliocene through to the early Pleistocene.

Morphologies of the scoppito southern mammoth in front were thoroughly supervised by Asier of EoFauna site(my special thanks). It is depicted here, as an extra large specimen and the auvergne mastodons are roughly the size of extant Asiatic elephants.

~Jagroar