Elephants for me...
Elephants for me...

Takayuki Kawabe (Fluvial sedimentologist)

Laboratory of Earth Science
Faculty of Education, Yamagata University

Elephants for me...

One of my studies is sedimentology of paleo-elephant's footprint fossils. Many paleo-elephant's fossil footprints are recently found in Neogine fluvial sediments in Japan (See references). They tell us many informations on sedimentary environment just when the paleo-elephant was walking; whether the surface was dried-up or wet, or it was covered by grass or not... Fossil footprints, of cource, tell us the morphological and kinematical infomations on paleo-elephants whose bodies can not see in the present day, and can only be estimated from the some pieces of fossil bones.

So, I wanted to see the recent elephants; how big are they?, how and where do they walk ? How do they live???

I had a chance to visit the Republic of South Africa in September, 1997, and I visited the Addo Elephant National Park near Port Elizabeth, in Eastern Cape Province. I took excitingly many photos of the elephants. Photos in this site were some of them. They were very pretty indeed. I'm very glad to meet them.



References

  • Fossil Footprints Reseach Group for Nojiri-ko Excavation (1992) footprint fossils of Naumann's elephants discovered from the Upper Pleistocene Nojiri-ko Formatiion. Eaarth Science, 46(6):385-404. (in Japanese)
  • Reseach Group for Fossil Footprints of Yasugawa (1995) Fossil Footprints from the Kobiwako Group at RIver Yasu, Kosei Town, Shiga Prefecture, Central Japan. Recearch Report of the Lake Biwa Museum Project Office, (3):1-134. (in Japanese)
  • Reseach Group for Fossil Footprints of Hattorigawa (1996) Fossil Footprints in the Ueno Formation, the Kobiwako Group. 122p., Mie Prefectural Museum. (in Japanese)

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    Copyright 1998-2019, Takayuki Kawabe