Anancus
genus of mammals (fossil)
Anancus is an extinct genus of "tetralophodont gomphothere" native to Afro-Eurasia, that lived from the Tortonian stage of the late Miocene until its extinction during the Early Pleistocene, roughly from 8.5–2 million years ago.
Taxonomy
The type species, Anancus arvernensis, was originally named in 1828 by Jean-Baptiste Croizet and Antoine Claude Gabriel Jobert as Mastodon arvernensis, based on remains found within the vicinity of the Puy de Dôme volcano in the Massif Central in central southern France, with the species name deriving from the Auvergne region of France where it was found. Anancus was subsequently named by Auguste Aymard in 1855 in a publication by M. J. Dorlhac, also based on remains found in the Massif Central region. The genus name Anancus derives from the Latin word ancus meaning "bent/curved" and the negative prefix "an-" with the intended meaning of "uncurved" or "straight" in reference to the shape of the tusks. Anancus is traditionally allocated to Gomphotheriidae, often as the only member of the subfamily Anancinae. Recently, some authors have excluded Anancus along with other tetralophodont gomphotheres from Gomphotheriidae, and regarded them as members of Elephantoidea instead.
Description
Two largely complete individuals of Anancus arvernensis reached shoulder heights of around 2.5–2.6 metres (8 ft 2 in – 8 ft 6 in), with a volumetric estimate suggesting a body mass of around 5.2 to 6 tonnes (11,000 to 13,000 lb), comparable to living African bush elephants. The tusks were largely straight and lacked enamel (though enamel was present in juveniles) and were slender, and proportionally large, with a large tusk of the species Anancus avernensis from Stoina, Romania measuring 3.71 metres (12.2 ft) in length with an estimated mass of 70 kilograms (150 lb). The tusks varied from projecting forward parallel to each other, to being outwardly divergent from each other, depending on the species. The skull is proportionally tall and short, with an elevated dome and an enlarged tympanic bulla.
Begin with the source’s own compact description: “Anancus” is genus of mammals (fossil). The dossier treats that line as a proposition to test through Anancus, genus and mammals, not as a finished interpretation.
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Datasets, specimens, observations and peer-reviewed methods provide the appropriate test for the technical claims summarized here. The source revision retrieved here is dated Sep 18, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q138102. None of the 0 selected statements returned an explicit reference. The first chronological checks are 1828 and 1855.
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This entry incorporates text from “Anancus” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.