Prehistoric proboscideans

Barytheriidae (meaning "heavy beasts") is an extinct family of primitive proboscideans that lived during the late Eocene and early Oligocene in North Africa and Oman. The Barytheriidae were the first large-sized proboscideans to appear in the fossil record and were characterized by a strong sexual dimorphism.

species of mammal

Plesielephantiformes is a proposed suborder of the Proboscidea, the group containing elephants and their close relatives. It was named and circumscribed in a 2001 study by Jeheskel Shoshani and colleagues to include Deinotheriidae, as well as Numidotheriidae and Barytheriidae. While originally proposed to represent a monophyletic clade, based on the supposed unifying character of having bilophodont teeth, most modern phylogenetic studies of Proboscidea find the group to be paraphyletic, with Deinotheriidae more closely related to Elephantiformes than to other supposed members of the group.

REDIRECT Moeritherium

Saloumia is an extinct genus of the order Proboscidea. It is one of the oldest members of the order and lived in the middle Eocene of Senegal. It is known only from a single molar, whose pronounced bumpy chewing surface indicates it is probably closely related to Moeritherium.