page_title: Schöningen forest elephant
section_title: Anatomy
hierarchical_section_title: Schöningen forest elephant / Description / Anatomy
caption_attribution_description: Deutsch: Kiefer des Waldelefanten von Schöningen
context_page_description: The Schöningen forest elephant is a set of fossil remains of a European forest elephant that lived around 300,000 years ago. The almost complete skeleton of the animal was discovered in Schöningen in Lower Saxony, Germany. It was found during archaeological investigations in an excavation site in the Schöningen opencast mine.
context_section_description: The individual from Schöningen is probably a female animal whose shoulder height is estimated to be around 3.2 meters and weight around 6.8  tons. During the excavation, 300 bones and a total of 700 bone parts were recovered, spread over an area of around 64 m². The finds include the 2.3 meter long tusks, the lower jaw, vertebrae and ribs, as well as the bones of three legs and the entire hyoid bone. The skeletal parts were largely in an anatomically correct arrangement. Various parts were missing, such as the pelvis, the left front leg with the shoulder blade and the foot bones of two legs. The preservation of the bones is mostly very good, only the more than one meter high skull of the individual had disintegrated into hundreds of small parts. This was caused by the comparatively light construction of the skull, which, like all elephants, consists of numerous air-filled and honeycomb-like hollow chambers. Overall, the animal lay parallel to the former lake shore with the head in the north and the rear in the south. The age of the animal is estimated to be around 50 years due to the worn teeth and osteoarthritis of the bones.
  Bite marks on the bones prove that predators ate the carrion of the forest elephant. Although no traces of human processing were found on the bones, there are indications of the presence of humans on the elephant carcass. So were between the bone about 30 haircuts of flints that the sharpening stone tools emerge. In addition, two bone artifacts were found that were used as tools by humans and had impact marks. These are the foot bones of a red deer and another approximately 12 cm long piece of bone from an animal species that cannot be identified.
caption: Lower jaw of the forest elephant from Schöningen with teeth
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