Cypriot pygmy hippopotamus

The Cypriot pygmy hippopotamus (Hippopotamus minor) is an extinct species of dwarf hippopotamus that inhabited the island of Cyprus from the Middle Pleistocene until the early Holocene. One of the smallest known hippopotamus species, it was comparable in size to the living pygmy hippopotamus, though it was more closely related to the common hippopotamus, with its small body size a result of insular dwarfism. It represented one of only two large terrestrial mammals on Cyprus alongside the Cyprus dwarf elephant. The species became extinct around 12,000 years ago following the arrival of humans on Cyprus, and potential evidence of human hunting has been found at the Aetokremnos rockshelter on the southern coast of the island.

History of discovery and taxonomy

Bones of fossil mammals have been known on Cyprus since at least the 15th century, when Cypriot historian Leontios Machairas reported that bones exposed in the Kyrenia/Pentadactylos mountains in the northern part of Cyprus were believed by locals to be the bones of Maronite Christians who had fled to the island, which they regarded as saints. An account from a later historian, Benedetto Bordone published in 1528, reporting on a similar deposit in the Kyrenia mountains, recounted that locals ground the bones into powder to make a potion they thought could cure many diseases. In 1698, the Dutch traveller Cornelis de Bruijn, remarking on another Kyrenia mountains bone deposit, made several images of bones he found, which he thought were deposited by the Biblical great flood. The remains in one of these images, which he identified as human, is now retrospectively identified as remains of the Cypriot pygmy hippopotamus.

The earliest scientific description of the species was given by French paleontologist Anselme Gaëtan Desmarest in 1822, who gave the current name Hippopotamus minor. The species Hippopotamus minutus named shortly after by Georges Cuvier in 1824 is now regarded as a junior synonym.