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Let’s first clarify that individual archaeological finds, and sometimes the most unique, not professionals – seekers antiquities, and the simplest people, most often – by accident. Exactly and happened in this case.
Having discovered a huge (about 2 meters long) skull of an unknown animal, a French farmer was afraid that his territory farms are now pouring scientists, journalists and just onlookers, and therefore hid him from sin far. This happened back in 2014. year, but because the unique find was stored just four years (it is not known where and in what condition), after which the Frenchman, apparently, overcame conscience, and he took the mysterious skull to the Museum of Natural the history of Toulouse, 70 kilometers from which it was located farm.
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Museum specialists immediately determined that the skull belongs Pyrenean mastodon – semi-mythical animal homfoteria, the distant ancestor of the modern elephant that appeared in European parts of the Earth about 15 to 18 million years ago. Why semi-mythical? The fact is that before that, archaeologists were only 4 teeth of homfoteria were discovered, and even that was 150 years ago, why, in the absence of the remains of the body, he was still considered semi-mythical (whether it was, or was not).
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That’s what this amazing archaeological site says. Finds Toulouse Museum worker Francis Duranton:
Imagine, I’ve been looking for traces of this mastodon for 35 years, and my teacher, now deceased, devoted his whole life to this matter, but he failed to prove that homfoteria is not mythical, but real animal, elephant cousin, who lived many millions of years ago. For example, this skull is at least 10 million years old, which is why we never managed to take a DNA sample – too ancient remains.
Finding a complete homfiter skull is not just luck, but real fiction, but for the archaeological world – big sensation. These huge animals have disappeared about 2 million years ago. True, we have very little reliable information about these mysterious creatures. It’s only known that besides huge tusks, the homfiterium possessed two more fangs about 80 centimeters long each with whom he apparently dug the earth.
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Unfortunately, archaeologists and museum workers in Toulouse failed find additional semi-mythical bones on the farmer’s site animal, why Francis Duranton believes that his search for the remains it’s too early to stop homfiter …
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DNA
