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Elephant fossils to be displayed
ABU DHABI - The six-to-eight million year old elephant bones found on the Takreer Beaat site at Ruwais will go on display at a special exhibition to be organised shortly in the capital.
- PUBLISHED: Sat 1 May 2004, 10:50 AM UPDATED: Thu 2 Apr 2015, 2:16 PM
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- (By a staff reporter)
Among the finds that will be shown are a 2.54-metre elephant tusk and the lower jaws of another elephant, according to the latest Takreer newsletter.
The fossils date back to the geological period known as the Late Miocene, when the climate of the Arabian peninsula was very different to that of today. At that time, scientists have discovered, the coastal areas of the Western Region of Abu Dhabi, stretching from Rumaitha to just beyond Jebel Dhanna, were much more fertile, with wide, slow-moving rivers and vegetation cover, rather like the Savanahs of today's East Africa. There was much more wildlife too.
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Investigations by the Abu Dhabi Islands Archaeological Survey (ADIAS) at the Beaat site, supported by Takreer, and other studies by the ADIAS and by the London-based Natural History Museum and Yale University in the US have identified the fossilised remains of elephants, hippopotamus, ancestors of today's horses and gazelles, ostriches and other birds, as well as crocodiles, turtles and fish. Conservation work on the fossils to be put on display was completed last October.
The fossil exhibition is now being prepared by the ADIAS, in association with the Environmental Research and Wildlife Development Agency (ERWDA), and will be housed in the foyer of the agency's headquarters in Abu Dhabi. It is to be opened soon.
The exhibition will seek to reproduce the ancient Miocene landscape of western Abu Dhabi, with a specially painted backdrop commissioned from fossil specialists in England. Pride of place in the foreground of the exhibition will be shared by the 2.54-metre elephant tusk from the Beaat site and a scale model of the ancient elephant itself, which has the scientific name of Stegotetrabelodon syrticus.
The animal was rather different from the elephant of today, probably larger, and with four tusks, not two. The model is being built for the exhibition by the taxidermy section of the Environment and Wildlife Management Department of the Private Department of the President, His Highness Shaikh Zayed bin Sultan Al Nahyan.
"Once opened, the exhibition is expected to provide quite an attraction to visitors, and will be included as part of the tour for school groups visiting the ERWDA headquarters," said the newsletter. It will also be open to the visitors, it said. The exhibition will be supported by Takreer, Adco, Natural History Museum, Yale and BP.