Shrinking Elephants Once Called Sicily Home

New research suggests that in as little as 40 generations, elephants could have become dwarf size on the island off Italy’s boot.

Elephants today are confined to the African and Asian continents. But their extinct relatives once roamed far and wide across the planet. When they settled onto islands, some species’ evolutionary course changed direction in a dramatic fashion. In a paper published earlier this month, scientists found clues to just how much island living can rapidly alter the evolution of these animals. “Evolution on islands is a quite intriguing field of science, since it can be seen as an experiment of nature or evolution in action,” said Sina Baleka, the paper’s lead author and a paleogeneticist at McMaster University in Canada. She and her co-authors hope their findings can offer insights into how species living today are affected by geographic isolation on islands and in other habitats.