Proboscidea

Homes

Distribution

These are not precise range maps. This series of maps merely indicate the continent(s) and ecozone(s) various groups of animals are native to.

Towards the end of the Ice Age, elephants, mammoths and mastodons collectively ranged across the northern continents and Africa. Mastodons even colonized South America, but they died out before the end of the Ice Age.

Proboscideans once inhabited every continent except Australia and Antarctica. South America was the last continent to be colonized by the trunked ones - and it was also the first to see them go, perhaps because they failed to adapt to its increasingly dense tropical forests.

But proboscideans remained widespread right up to the end of the Ice Age. As recently as 10,000 years ago, the woolly mammoth (Mammuthus primigenius) roamed the northern tundra of North America and Eurasia, while the American mastodon (Mammut americanum) ranged from Alaska south into Central America. Did they die out with so many other prehistoric mammals because of climate change, or did human hunters exterminate them? A third possibility is all of the above: As their numbers dwindled, their populations became more vulnerable to increasingly sophisticated human hunters. Dwarf elephants that evolved on islands around the world, including California’s Channel Islands, were especially easy targets.

Surviving elephant species are paleotropical, with African elephants restricted to tropical Africa and the Asian elephant restricted to tropical Asia. Within their range, they were formerly widespread in forests and grasslands, with African elephants even occurring in arid areas.

Habitat

The African bush elelphant is widespread on savanna grasslands, though it also frequents arid areas as well as forests. The forest elephant is more restricted to tropical forests. Asian elephants inhabit forests, grasslands and scrubland.

Elephants thrive in arid Namibia, like these animals in Etosha National Park.

Habitat Niche

Elephants are fully terrestrial. None are arboreal or semi-aquatic, though they like water.