The giraffe's heavyweight cousin gets a facelift

The first fossils of the beast were discovered in the Sivalik Hills Formation of India by Hugh Falconer and Proby Thomas Cautley. The animal was described in a paper in 1836, mainly on the basis  of a big, heavy skull. Many more would be found over time in Africa, and the Near and Middle East. At the time, the creature was put in a rather loose grouping known as “pachyderms”. Today this includes just elephants but at the time nearly every big and thick-skinned herbivore was a “pachyderm”, even giraffes, hippos and rhinos,. All of these were known from good fossil remains, with the exception of one.

A prehistoric giraffe was rather new to science. Early on, it was even thought that Sivatherium had a trunk, given that its nasal cavity was so large. This trunked rendition continued for quite some time, and Sivatherium became an antelope-like creature, very bulky and heavily-built with a short neck. It was often compared to a moose due to its ossicones or horns, which resembled short thick antlers. This version was popular until more fossils of the creature were discovered.

Finally the new Sivatherium was revealed after the discovery of new remains. It was much slimmer than previously believed, more like a proper okapi or a member of the giraffe family than an oversized moose. It had a medium-length neck, and stood over three meters tall at the head. It was certainly not ponderous and elephantine, and neither was it the walking mammalian skyscraper that the modern giraffe is but rather something in between.

Vasika
Udurawane

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