death site

Elephants ranged over Schöningen in Lower Saxony 300,000 years ago. In recent years, remains of at least ten elephants have been found at the Paleolithic sites situated on the edges of the former opencast lignite mine. Now, archaeologists have recovered for the first time in Schöningen an almost complete of a Eurasian straight-tusked elephant skeleton ( Palaeoloxodon antiquus). The animal died on what was then the western lakeshore - what exactly happened and what the biotope surrounding the area was like 300,000 years ago is now being carefully reconstructed by the team from the Senckenberg Centre for Human Evolution and Palaeoenvironment at the University of Tübingen, in cooperation with the Lower Saxony State Office for Heritage. [[{"type":"media","view_mode":"media_large","fid":"73910","attributes":{"alt":"Excavation site Schöningen. (Image