Fossilized cheek teeth have helped paleontologists learn a lot about what ancient elephants ate millions of years ago. Turns out, those with a less picky diet and more adaptability to changing environments survived. And those who stuck to a grass-based diet went extinct when there were extreme fluctuations in the climate.
“This supports the hypothesis of such regions as 'species-factories' where evolutionary adaptation to changing environmental conditions first centered around," said Juha Saarinen, a paleontologist at the University of Helsinki and lead author, in a statement. Details on the study were published in Nature Ecology & Evolution.
