Cave chapel dedicated to St. Ellas, north Cyprus. About 1 2 feet high at entrance Bones 

 found inside the cave are all pygmy hippopotamus. 



phant is known to be the largest living land animal, 

 with a shoulder height of 10-13 feet. The Cypriot pyg- 

 my elephant, Elephas Cypriotes, known from 13 sites, 

 would probably have stood only 3 or 4 feet tall. 



Several sites have produced the remains of rodents 

 and there is also a turn-of-the-century record of a few 

 bones of a genet (a carnivore related to the civet and 

 mongoose) from one of the sites that also produced hip- 

 popotamus and elephant remains. The genet is prob- 

 ably not contemporary with the pygmy forms, and its 

 presence on the island cannot be easily explained. 



Earlier, larger forms of hippopotamus have not yet 

 been found on the island, but there are three additional 

 sites on Cyprus which have produced a total of seven 

 elephant teeth larger and probably older than those of 

 E. Cypriotes. These chance finds come from deep wells 

 and gravel pits and belong to an animal intermediate in 

 size between the mainland ancestor and the later Cyp- 

 riot dwarfed form. 



Only one of the Cypriot sites has an absolute date 

 (see below), but scholars have assumed that many of 

 the sites producing the pygmy mammals may be 

 100,000 or even 500,000 years old, based on their 

 geologic situation. With the cooperation of Prof. Jef- 

 frey L. Bada of the Scripps Institution of Oceanography 

 in La Jolla, California, I have initiated a project to date 

 some of these bones with a process known as amino 

 acid racemization. Dr. Bada has already done similar 

 dating work on the pygmy elephants of Sicily. 



I first became interested in Mediterranean island 

 dwarfed animals while doing paleontological and 



archaeological work as an undergraduate at Harvard 

 University. In 1973 and 1974, under the sponsorship of 

 Harvard's Museum of Comparative Zoology (MCZ), I 

 examined previously known mammal sites, discovered 

 new sites, and collected bones for the MCZ. 



In the course of conducting this research in the 

 early 1970s, 1 talked with many local people about 

 these sites and bones and heard numerous interpre- 

 tations of these remains. One story, known since 1860- 

 70, told of bones found in caves at Cape Pyla in south- 

 ern Cyprus as being the remains of saints or Early Chris- 

 tian martyrs. Pilgrimages were made to these caves and 

 candles were burned there in honor of the sacred re- 

 mains. Such pilgrimages continued into the early 

 1970s; all the bones are actually pygmy hippopotamus. 



At a site in the southern foothills of the Kyrenia 

 mountains in northern Cyprus, an eroded cave has 

 been made into a small chapel by adding walls and a 

 roof, and dedicated to St. Elias. When this hippopota- 

 mus site was first discovered in 1902 a native woman 

 came to the chapel to light an altar lamp, believing 

 that these were the saint's bones. 



On the north coast, near the village of Ayios 

 Yeoryios, a narrow rock ledge preserves large numbers 

 of pygmy hippopotamus bones as well as two pygmy 

 elephant teeth. These bones are believed to be the re- 

 mains of St. Phanourios, a youth who heard the call of 

 Christ and sailed to Cyprus from Turkey. According to 

 tradition, he died while ascending the cliff at this spot; 

 the rock-cut chape! and a more recent white-washed 

 chapel are both dedicated to him. Until at least 1970 



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