On Friday I gave you this object to identify:
It was a bit of a tricky one, since a few vertebrae aren’t a huge amount to go on. However, the large size helps narrow it down, as do the distinctively long neural spines.
As Ric Morris and henstridgesj spotted, the vertebrae are very compressed, not providing much scope for movement, suggesting an animal that relies on a rigid backbone for support and transferring large forces. This is not something you see in whales (at least not after the cervical and first few thoracic vertebrae), since water supports their weight and they maintain some flexibility in their spine for changing their orientation in the water when swimming. That leaves us with very few terrestrial mammals big enough to have vertebrae of this size – particularly considering that these vertebrae are from a juvenile animal.
The neural spines are long, but not laterally flattened. This suggests that they are not from a large Buffalo, Hippopotamus or Rhinoceros, since all of these animals have their neural spines orientated as a dorsal blade. The only animal of the right size that has dorso-ventrally flattened neural spines in the mid-thoracic region (that I’m aware of) is the Asian Elephant Elephas maximus Linnaeus, 1758. So well done to henstridgesj, Robin and Anthony Wilkes for spotting that.
To the best of my knowledge it’s these vertebrae that contribute to the hump-backed appearance of the Asian elephant, compared to the sway-backed African Elephant. In the African Elephant the neural spines become shorter towards the middle of the thoracic region:
Whereas in the Asian Elephant the remain long, but change their orientation:
One of those small differences that give us the clues to help pick species apart.