stegodon

American  

[steg-uh-don] / ˈstɛg əˌdɒn /

noun

1. any extinct elephantlike mammal of the genus Stegodon, from the late Pliocene and Pleistocene epochs, usually considered to be directly ancestral to the modern elephant.

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stegodon British  

/ ˈstɛɡəˌdɒnt, ˈstɛɡəˌdɒn /

noun

1. any proboscidean mammal of the genus Stegodon, of Pliocene to Pleistocene times, similar to the mastodons

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Etymology

Origin of stegodon

< New Latin, equivalent to Greek stego- stego- + -odōn toothed; -odont

Example Sentences

For instance, researchers first estimated the age of the elephant-like Stegodon trigonocephalus not by dating the fossils themselves, but by dating fossils from other animals collected from deposits more than 100 kilometres away6.

From Nature

Morwood and colleagues posited that Flores's ancient settlers underwent island dwarfing, in parallel with other colonizing mammals such as Stegodon.

From Nature

Stone tools associated with Stegodon bones in Liang Bua suggested that H. floresiensis could have hunted and butchered these animals.

From Nature

It soon yielded promising finds: stone tools that seemed to be more than 10,000 years old, and fossils of a pygmy form of the extinct elephant-like Stegodon.

From Nature

If these videos of modern marabou storks and vultures are any indication, I’m not placing bets on who got the last scraps of Stegodon meat, but it may not have been a hobbit or even a komodo dragon: The bird remains from Liang Bua paint a lively and colorful background for Homo floresiensis, but their implications extend far beyond a soundtrack to the hobbit story.

From Scientific American