More than a dozen young elephants — newborns, toddlers and teens — gamboled through mud in an ice age elephant "nursery" in southwestern Spain more than 100,000 years ago, according to new analysis of tracks that the youngsters left behind.
Scientists examined 34 sets of tracks belonging to straight-tusked elephants (Palaeoloxodon antiquus) — extinct relatives of modern elephants — at a site known as the Matalascañas Trampled Surface in Huelva, on the Iberian Peninsula. As the name implies, this was a high-traffic area for a short period of time during the latter part of the Pleistocene epoch (2.6 million to about 11,700 years ago), when diverse animals, including Neanderthals, crisscrossed the surface.
