THE WORLD'S RECORD ELEPHANT TUSKS 



TIIK recent studies by Professor Henry Fairfield Osborn of the extinct 

 elephants, in the course of which he has brought together a collection of 

 commanding importance, have attracted from paleontologists and others 

 an unusual amount of attention. The magnificent skeleton of the Columbian 

 mammoth, which now dominates the main hall of vertebrate paleontology in 

 the American Museum, certainly is one of the most, remarkable of all 

 museum specimens of proboscidians. 



Through Mr. Charles T. Barney, the Zoological Society has recently 

 received, as a gift from him, the most remarkable pair of "living" elephant 

 tusks of which the modern world ever has known. When the existence of this 

 gigantic pair was first made known to us, their stated length seemed incred- 

 ible; and as the tusks stand to-day in the Zoological Park, every person who 

 sees them for the first time, and without previous knowledge, finds it difficult 

 to believe that they have not come from an extinct mammoth of gigantic size. 



Our frontispiece represents the pair of tusks of a living species of East 

 African elephant, which arrived at the Zoological Park on February 4th, 

 1907, from Abyssinia, via London. The left tusk, as seen in Plate I, measures 

 on the curve 11 feet o 1 /^ inches; the other measures 11 feet, and the net weight 

 of the two is 293 pounds. The longest tusk exceeds by one inch the length of 

 the longest tusk of the great Columbian mammoth (Elephas columbi) in the 

 American Museum, and it is 1 foot 1^2 inches longer than the next longest tusk 

 of an African elephant. The circumference of the largest tusk of the pair 

 shown is 18V1> inches. 



Usually a very large "living" elephant tusk is very thick and rather 

 straight. One of the finest features of this matchless pair is their symmetry 

 and their beautiful curvature. In leaving the skull they curved outward, side- 

 wise, then when the coast was clear, curved upward in a commanding sweep. In 

 making the photograph which is reproduced as Plate I, the man, introduced 

 for the sake of comparison, was 5 feet 9 inches in height to the top of his cap, 

 and he stood actually between the rear curves of the tusks. 



