Stegodon

Stegodon Temporal range: Miocene-, 11.6–0.0041 Ma PreЄ Є O S D C P T J K Pg N
Stegodon skeleton at the Gansu Provincial Museum.
Scientific classification
Kingdom:	Animalia
Phylum:	Chordata
Clade:	Synapsida
Class:	Mammalia
Order:	Proboscidea
Family:	†Stegodontidae
Genus:	†Stegodon Falconer, 1847
Species
†S. aurorae (Matsumoto, 1918) †S. elephantoides (Clift, 1828) †S. florensis Hooijer, 1957 †S. ganesha (Faloner and Cautley, 1846) †S. kaisensis Hopwood, 1939 †S. luzonensis von Koenigswald, 1956 †S. miensis (Matsumoto, 1941) †S. mindanensis (Naumann, 1890) †S. orientalis Owen, 1870 †S. sompoensis Hooijer, 1964 †S. sondaari van den Bergh, 1999 †S. trigonocephalus (Martin, 1887) †S. zdanskyi Hopwood, 1935

Stegodon (meaning "roofed tooth" from the Greek words στέγειν stegein 'to cover' and ὀδούς odous 'tooth') is a genus of the extinct subfamily Stegodontinae of the order Proboscidea. It was assigned to the family Elephantidae (Abel, 1919), but has also been placed in Stegodontidae (R. L. Carroll, 1988). Stegodonts were present from 11.6 mya to late Pleistocene, with unconfirmed records of regional survival until 4,100 years ago. Fossils are found in Asian and African strata dating from the late Miocene. They lived in large parts of Asia, East and Central Africa and North America during the .

Stegodon was one of the largest proboscideans, along with more derived genera. S. zdansky is known from an old male (50+) from the Yellow River that is 3.87 metres (12.7 ft) tall and weighed approximately 12.7 tonnes (12.5 long tons; 14.0 short tons). It had a humerus 1.21 metres (4.0 ft) long, a femur 1.46 metres (4.8 ft) long, and a pelvis 2 metres (6.6 ft) wide.

A dwarf population survived until 12,000 years ago on the island of Flores, Indonesia. A review of 130 papers written about 180 different sites with proboscidean remains in southern China revealed Stegodon to have been more common than Asian elephants; the papers gave many recent radiocarbon dates, the youngest being 2,150 BCE (4,100 BP). However, Turvey et al. (2013) reported that one of the faunal assemblages including supposed fossils of Holocene Stegodon (from Gulin, Sichuan Province) is actually late Pleistocene in age; other supposed fossils of Holocene stegodonts were lost and their age cannot be verified. The authors concluded that the latest confirmed occurrences of Stegodon from China are from late Pleistocene, and that its Holocene survival cannot be substantiated. The name Stegodon is derived from the Greek words στεγειν stegein ('to cover') and οδον odοn ('tooth') because of the distinctive ridges on the animal's molars.