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Deinotherium

Extinct genus of mammals

  • 19 min read
  • 6 chapters
Azov. History, Archaeology and Paleontology Museum-Reserve. Deinotherium
Alexxx1979 · CC BY-SA 4.0

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History and naming

In 1613, a gravestone engraved with the name "Theutobochus Rex" was reputedly excavated from a sand pit in the vicinity of Langon, near Montrigaud in southeast France, also reputedly alongside enormous bones, and silver coins depicting the Roman Republic leader Gaius Marius, who had defeated the Germanic king Teutobod (who by the 17th century was often mythologised as a giant) and his army in southern France around 100 BC. A French surgeon named Mazurier exhibited these relics across France, and for some time they were located in apartments owned by Queen of France Marie de' Medici. However, the veracity of the story was quickly questioned and subject to much controversy, with a long-running dispute via an exchange of pamphlets between the University of Paris surgeon Nicholas Habicot, who argued for a giant identity, and botany student and anatomist Jean Riolan who argued based on comparative anatomy that the bones represented some kind of large animal (in Riolan's opinion likely an elephant), and that the supposed discovery was either mistaken or a fraud.

21 years later in 1634, French polymath Nicolas-Claude Fabri de Peiresc asked the physician Nivolet to investigate the site and the relics (except the tombstone, which was now missing). Following the details of a report that Nivolet sent to him Peiresc concluded that the story was a hoax (based on the fact that the coins were actually from Massalia and did not depict Marius, and that it was unlikely a Germanic leader would have a gravestone written in Latin which he and his people did not speak) and later after another discovery of another supposed giant within the vicinity of Montrigaud, like Riolan concluded the remains represented those of an elephant. The bones were eventually handed over to the French National Museum of Natural History, and were centuries later recognised as belonging to Deinotherium.

In 1715, French scholar René de Réaumur investigated turquoise mines in southern France, and realised that the ores used were not rocks like those from turquoise mines from the Middle East, but were blue-green stained fossilised teeth. In his memoir he included a plate with an image of one of these teeth, which was later recognised as being the earliest depiction of a Deinotherium tooth. Other confirmed and probable Deinotherium remains including lower jaws, teeth and ivory fragments, were reported from across France from the 1750s to the 1780s, including a lower jaw with teeth broken into two halves found near Beinc in Haute-Garonne, southwest France in 1783. In 1822, based on the similarity of the teeth to those of tapirs, Georges Cuvier, widely regarded as the father of vertebrate paleontology, gave the name "Tapirs gigantesques" to the remains, primarily based on the Bienc jaw, concluding that they belong to giant elephant-sized tapir relatives. The genus Deinotherium and the species D. giganteum was coined in 1829 by German paleontologist Johann Jakob von Kaup based on a complete but broken mandible (lower jaw) discovered in sands near Eppelsheim, southwest Germany. Kaup originally incorrectly reconstructed the jaw's tusks as being upward facing, but corrected this several years later. A second species D. bavaricum was named in 1831 by German paleontologist Christian Erich Hermann von Meyer based on remains found in Bavaria, which von Meyer regarded as comparable to rhinoceroses, but is now recognised to belong to the separate deinotheriid genus Prodeinotherium. In 1834 French paleontologist Édouard Lartet studied additional remains of Deinotherium that had been recovered in France. In 1836, Kaup's friend August von Klipstein found a skull of Deinotherium also within the Eppelsheim area, which was later in 1837 exhibited in France.

The fragmentary and unusual nature of known Deithotherium remains sparked much speculation as to its appearance and relationships with other animals. French anatomist Henri Marie Ducrotay de Blainville in an 1837 paper regarded Deinotherium as being closely related to sirenians (manatees and dugongs), though this view was contested by other scholars. While Kaup originally assumed that Deinotherium had large, armadillo or anteater-like claws based on erroneously interpreting a large ungual claw (later recognised as belonging to a chalicothere) found near the Epplesheim jaw as belonging to Deinotherium, by 1837 he came to regard Deinotherium as a "pachyderm" (an obsolete zoological term to describe large terrestrial mammals with thick skin, such as elephants, hippos and rhinoceroses). French zoologist Hercule Eugène Straus-Dürckheim in an 1837 publication assumed that the head was too heavy to have belonged to a terrestrial animal and argued that Deinotherium was a marine mammal intermediate between cetaceans (whales, dolphins, etc) and pachyderms. An aquatic ecology was also supported by British paleontologist William Buckland in an 1838 publication, who also suggested that it used its tusks to cling to river banks and was a burrowing animal.

Later finds of Deinotherium remains at various localities in France in the 1840s and 1850s clarified its anatomy, which by 1859 had led it to be widely accepted for Deinotherium to be placed within the Proboscidea (the broader group which contains elephants and their extinct relatives), and finds in India described as D. indicum extended the range of the genus outside of Europe. Fossils of an exceptionally large specimen found in Manzati, Romania between the late 19th and early 20th century were described as D. gigantissimum. In Bulgaria Deinotherium remains have been found from 1897 onward, with one particular fossil of an almost complete animal found in 1965. These remains were officially described in December 2006 as D. thraceiensis, making it the most recently named species, although later studies synonymize it with the other European species.

The name Deinotherium is derived from Ancient Greek δεινός, (deinós), meaning "terrible", and θηρίον (therión), meaning "beast". Some authors have on occasion referred to Deinotherium as Dinotherium, following latinization of the first element of the name. Although pronunciation remains unchanged, Deinotherium remains the valid spelling as it was coined first.

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