Daouitherium


Daouitherium is an extinct genus of early proboscideans that lived during the early Eocene some 55 million years ago in North Africa.
Remains of this animal, fragments of jaws and teeth, have been found in the Ouled Abdoun Basin in Morocco. It is estimated to have weighed between, making it one of the earliest large mammals known from Africa and one of the oldest known proboscideans. Another estimate gives a weight of.

Description

Daouitherium is known only from lower jaws and associated cheek teeth. It had lophodont and bilophodont molars, i.e. molars with large ridges. The second and third premolars had a notably large cusp called the hypoconid. Gheerbrant et al. described the teeth as similar to those of other early proboscideans Phosphatherium, Numidotherium, and Barytherium.

Taxonomy

A cladogram of Proboscidea based on the phylogenetic analysis of Hautier et al. 2021 is below: