{"id":873312,"date":"2026-03-16T15:55:17","date_gmt":"2026-03-16T15:55:17","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/de\/873312\/"},"modified":"2026-03-16T15:55:17","modified_gmt":"2026-03-16T15:55:17","slug":"hunted-by-neanderthals-giant-elephants-traveled-hundreds-of-kilometers-across-ice-age-europe","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/de\/873312\/","title":{"rendered":"Hunted by Neanderthals: Giant Elephants traveled hundreds of Kilometers across Ice-Age Europe"},"content":{"rendered":"

International research team analyzes prehistoric teeth of European straight-tusked elephants<\/strong><\/p>\n

Fossil teeth can preserve remarkable information because tooth enamel grows slowly and records environmental data layer by layer. An international research team with the participation of scientists from the Rhine-Main Universities Alliance has now reconstructed the life histories of four European straight-tusked elephants (Palaeoloxodon antiquus) by analyzing their teeth. These elephants \u2013 significantly larger than modern species \u2013 were the largest land mammals of prehistoric Europe and lived during the last interglacial period around 125,000 years ago. A 2023 study had shown that they were prey for Neanderthal hunters.<\/strong><\/p>\n

\"\"125,000 years ago, straight-tusked elephants (Palaeoloxodon antiquus) populated the prehistoric Europe. Image: Hodari Nundu, CC-BY-4.0<\/p>\n

Neumark-Nord in northeastern Germany was a lake landscape in the last interglacial period. It is rich in archeological finds discovered during lignite mining. The area in Saxony-Anhalt is one of the most important European paleontological sites for the European straight-tusked elephant Palaeoloxodon antiquus. Fossil remains of more than 70 elephants have been found there \u2013 animals that were once hunted in this region by Neanderthals. Because of this unusually large number of finds, the site provides a unique insight into the relationship between these massive animals and the humans of the Pleistocene.<\/p>\n

An international research team from Germany, the Netherlands, and the United States has now examined the teeth of four of these elephants in greater detail. Using an innovative approach that combines the analysis of isotopes (Carbon, Oxygen, and Strontium) and proteins (palaeoproteomics), the researchers reconstructed migration behavior, diet, and even the sex of several individuals. Strontium isotope analyses along the direction of growth of the molars showed that the elephants had spent several years in different regions of Europe. The data were collected in Frankfurt by Elena Armaroli and Federico Lugli under the supervision of Prof. Wolfgang M\u00fcller, one of the directors of the Frankfurt Isotope and Element Research Center (FIERCE) at Goethe University. The Carbon and Oxygen isotope analyses were conducted at the Max Planck Institute for Chemistry in Mainz.<\/p>\n

Elena Armaroli, now a postdoctoral researcher at the University of Modena and Reggio Emilia (UNIMORE) in Italy and the study\u2019s first author, explains: \u201cThanks to isotope analyses, we can trace the movements of elephants almost as if we had a travel diary that has been preserved in their teeth for more than one hundred thousand years.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cSome of the elephants we studied were animals that did not stay in just one area,\u201d says Federico Lugli, associate professor at UNIMORE and, like Armaroli, a corresponding author of the study. \u201cTheir teeth show that they traveled very long distances \u2013 up to 300 kilometers \u2013 before reaching what is now Neumark-Nord. This allows us to reconstruct their home ranges and understand how these animals used the landscape.\u201d<\/p>\n

The research team also identified the sex of the four elephants: three males and \u2013 most likely \u2013 one female. Two of the males show isotope signatures that differ significantly from those expected for local bed rocks in the area of Neumark-Nord. This suggests that the males, much like modern elephants, ranged over larger territories than the females.<\/p>\n

Elena Armaroli concludes: \u201cThe concentration of remains and the isotope profile of the animals suggest that Neanderthals did not kill the elephants merely when a favorable opportunity arose. Everything points to organized hunting in which even such enormous prey animals could be deliberately targeted. For this, Neanderthals must have known the landscape well, cooperated, and planned.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cThis study also marks an important methodological advance,\u201d emphasizes Federico Lugli. \u201cFor the first time, paleoproteomics has been applied to European straight-tusked elephants, allowing us to determine the sex of individual animals from proteins preserved in tooth enamel.\u201d<\/p>\n

The study is the latest in a series of ongoing scientific analyses of material from the former Neumark-Nord lignite mine. The research projects are conducted by a joint team from MONREPOS Archaeological Research Centre and Museum for Human Behavioural Evolution in Neuwied \u2013 a department of Leibniz-Zentrum f\u00fcr Arch\u00e4ologie (LEIZA) \u2013, Johannes Gutenberg University Mainz (JGU), and Leiden University. They have been made possible through the continuous support of the State Office for Heritage Management and Archaeology of Saxony-Anhalt.<\/p>\n

The aim of these research projects is to better determine the different dimensions of the Neanderthals\u2019 ecological footprint. The results show that Neanderthals were active gatherers and hunters operating within a rich lakeshore ecosystem. The site provides evidence that people systematically butchered animal carcasses at different locations and extracted fat from large mammals on a large scale. They also consumed plant foods such as hazelnuts and acorns. Neanderthals appear to have repeatedly used the resources of this ecosystem and may even have modified the landscape through the use of fire. They were likely organized in larger social groups than previously assumed.<\/p>\n

\u201cWhat we see at Neumark-Nord is not a picture of mere survival, but of a population that understood its environment and interacted with it actively and in complex ways over a period of at least 2,500 years,\u201d says study author Sabine Gaudzinski-Windheuser, professor of prehistoric and protohistoric archeology at JGU and head of institute at MONREPOS.<\/p>\n

\u201cAt least some of male elephants uncovered at Neumark spent some of their adolescence and young adulthood away from the Neumark lake land. If Neumark was a point of attraction for elephants from different regions aggregating here or the Neumark area was the homeland of an elephant population, with individuals leaving the area for a certain time span, we can\u2019t extract from isotopes alone\u201d, says co-author Professor Thomas T\u00fctken from the Applied and Analytical Paleontology Group at JGU. \u201cTo understand the population dynamics of the Neumark elephants and with that Neanderthal hunting at Neumark, we have started a genetic study of the Neumark elephants\u201d, adds Lutz Kindler, member of the Neumark-Nord team and researcher at MONREPOS and JGU.<\/p>\n

Participating Institutions:<\/strong>
University of Modena and Reggio Emilia, Italy
Goethe University Frankfurt, Germany
California Institute of Technology, Davis, USA
Johannes Gutenberg-Universit\u00e4t Mainz, Germany
MONREPOS Archaeological Research Center and Museum for Human Behavioral Evolution, Leibniz Zentrum f\u00fcr Arch\u00e4ologie (LEIZA), Neuwied, Germany
Leiden University, The Netherlands
University of California, Davis, USA
Max Planck Institute for Chemistry, Mainz, Germany
Columbia University, New York, USA<\/p>\n

Publication: <\/strong>Elena Armaroli, Federico Lugli, Th\u00e9o Tacail, Lutz Kindler, Sabine Gaudzinski-Windheuser, Fulco Scherjon, Wil Roebroeks, Glendon Parker, Hubert Vonhof, Anna Cipriani, Thomas T\u00fctken, Wolfgang M\u00fcller: Life histories of straight-tusked elephants from the Last Interglacial Neanderthal site of Neumark-Nord (~125 ka).<\/strong> Science Advances (2026) https:\/\/doi.org\/10.1126\/sciadv.adz0114<\/a><\/p>\n

Contact:<\/strong>
Professor Federico Lugli
Laboratorio di Geochimica
Universit\u00e0 degli Studi di Modena e Reggio Emilia
federico.lugli@unimore.it<\/a>
https:\/\/www.geochem.unimore.it\/chi-siamo\/<\/a><\/p>\n

Dr. Elena Armaroli
Dipartimento di Scienze Chimiche e Geologiche
Universit\u00e0 degli Studi di Modena e Reggio Emilia
Tel. +39 3312563925
elena.armaroli@unimore.it<\/p>\n

Professor Wolfgang M\u00fcller
Institute of Geosciences \/
Frankfurt Isotope and Element Research Center (FIERCE)
Goethe University Frankfurt
Tel. +49 (0)69 798 40291
w.muller@em.uni-frankfurt.de<\/a>
www.uni-frankfurt.de\/49540288\/Homepage-Mueller<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"International research team analyzes prehistoric teeth of European straight-tusked elephants Fossil teeth can preserve remarkable information because tooth…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":873212,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":"","_share_on_mastodon":"0"},"categories":[3933],"tags":[331,332,548,663,158,3934,3935,192991,13,14,15,12],"class_list":["post-873312","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-eu","tag-aktuelle-nachrichten","tag-aktuelle-news","tag-eu","tag-europa","tag-europaeische-union","tag-europe","tag-european-union","tag-geosciences-and-geography","tag-headlines","tag-nachrichten","tag-news","tag-schlagzeilen"],"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@de\/116239671375082080","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/de\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/873312","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/de\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/de\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/de\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/de\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=873312"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/de\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/873312\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/de\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/873212"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/de\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=873312"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/de\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=873312"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/de\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=873312"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}