Platybelodon

Platybelodon was an extinct type of four-tusked elephant-like animals (Proboscidea). It is now placed in the Amebelodontidae, a related group from the famous gomphotheres. These were large herbivores related to modern elephants. They lived in wet forests in Africa, Asia and the Caucasus.

Platybelodon Temporal range: Miocene
Skeleton exhibited at Hubei province
Scientific classification
Kingdom:	Animalia
Phylum:	Chordata
Class:	Mammalia
Order:	Proboscidea
Family:	†Gomphotheriidae
Genus:	†Platybelodon Borissiak, 1928

These animals are commonly known as shovel tuskers. Platybelodon lived during the Early Miocene epoch, about 15–10 million years ago, about the same time as Deinotherium, Amebelodon and the famous Gomphotherium.

Palaeobiology

Platybelodon was previously believed to have fed in the swampy areas of grassy savannas, using its teeth to shovel up aquatic and semi-aquatic vegetation.

However, wear patterns on the teeth suggest that it used its lower tusks to strip bark from trees. They may have used the sharp incisors that formed the edge of the "shovel" more like a modern-day scythe, grasping branches with its trunk and rubbing them against the lower teeth to cut it from a tree. However, there is still speculation whether Platybelodon had two different sexes: male or female traits.