New fossil remains of Elephas from the southern Levant: Implications for the evolutionary history of the Asian elephant

•New elephant fossils are described from archaeological sites in Israel and Jordan.•The remains are 500-200,000 years old and are of the lineage of the Asian elephant.•The teeth are primitive and reminiscent of an earlier species from India.•The new fossils link a 1-myr-old Near Eastern elephant tooth with historical finds.

We describe new fossil remains of elephant (Elephas cf. hysudricus) from archaeological sites in the Levant: Ma'ayan Baruch (Israel) and 'Ain Soda (Jordan). Both sites date to the Middle Pleistocene based on stone artefacts typical of Levantine Late Acheulian assemblages. The elephant remains show 'primitive' dental features reminiscent of E. hysudricus from the Plio-Pleistocene of the Siwaliks (northern India), the species thought to be ancestral to Asian elephant E. maximus. Regionally, the new fossils are chronologically intermediate between an earlier (ca. 1 Ma) record of Elephas sp. from Evron Quarry (Israel), and Holocene remains of E. maximus from archaeological sites in NW Syria, Turkey, Iraq and Iran. It is unclear at present whether this represents continuity of occupation or, more plausibly, independent westward expansions.