parent_taxon moeritherium
Lake Moeris ( genitive  ) is an ancient lake in the northwest of the Faiyum Oasis , southwest of Cairo , Egypt . In prehistory , it was a freshwater lake , with an ___MASK20___ estimated to vary between 1 , 270 km² ( 490 mi² ) and 1 , 700 km² ( 656 mi² ). Elephants are large mammals of the family ___MASK32___ and the order ___MASK35___ . Two species are traditionally recognised , the African elephant (" Loxodonta africana ") and the Asian elephant (" Elephas maximus "), although some evidence suggests that African bush elephants and African forest elephants are separate species (" L . africana " and " L . cyclotis " respectively ). Elephants are scattered throughout sub - Saharan Africa , South Asia , and Southeast Asia . ___MASK32___ is the only surviving family of the order ___MASK35___ ; other , now extinct , members of the order include deinotheres , gomphotheres , mammoths , and mastodons . Male African elephants are the largest extant terrestrial animals and can reach a height of and weigh . All elephants have several distinctive features , the most notable of which is a long trunk or proboscis , used for many purposes , particularly breathing , lifting water , and grasping objects . Their incisors grow into tusks , which can serve as weapons and as tools for moving objects and digging . Elephants ' large ear flaps help to control their body temperature . Their pillar - like legs can carry their great weight . African elephants have larger ears and concave backs while Asian elephants have smaller ears and convex or level backs . A ___MASK58___ is any species of the extinct genus Mammuthus , proboscideans commonly equipped with long , curved tusks and , in northern species , a covering of long hair . They lived from the Pliocene epoch ( from around 5 million years ago ) into the Holocene at about 4 , 500 years ago in Africa , Europe , Asia , and North America . They were members of the family ___MASK32___ , which also contains the two genera of modern elephants and their ancestors . Mammoths stem from an ancestral species called " M . africanavus ", the African ___MASK58___ . These mammoths lived in northern Africa and disappeared about 3 or 4 million years ago . Descendants of these mammoths moved north and eventually covered most of Eurasia . These were " M . meridionalis ", the ' southern mammoths '. The Faiyum Oasis (" Waet El Fayyum ") is a depression or basin in the desert immediately to the west of the Nile south of Cairo . The extent of the basin ___MASK20___ is estimated at between 1 , 270 km² ( 490 mi² ) and 1700 km² ( 656 mi² ). The basin floor comprises fields watered by a channel of the Nile , the Bahr Yussef , as it drains into a desert depression to the west of the Nile Valley . The Bahr Yussef veers west through a narrow neck of land north of Ihnasya , between the archaeological sites of El Lahun and Gurob near Hawara ; it then branches out , providing rich agricultural land in the Faiyum basin , draining into the large saltwater Lake Moeris ( Birket Qarun ). The lake was freshwater in prehistory but is today a saltwater lake . It is a source for tilapia and other fish for the local ___MASK20___ . ___MASK32___ is a family of large , herbivorous mammals collectively called elephants and mammoths . These are terrestrial large mammals with a snout modified into a trunk and teeth modified into tusks . Most genera and species in the family are extinct . Only two genera , " ___MASK29___ " ( African elephants ) and " Elephas " ( Asiatic elephants ), are living . Tusks are elongated , continuously growing front teeth , usually but not always in pairs , that protrude well beyond the mouth of certain ___MASK12___ species . They are most commonly canines , as with warthogs , pig , and walruses , or , in the case of elephants , elongated incisors . In most tusked species both the males and the females have tusks although the males ' are larger . Tusks are generally curved , though the narwhal ' s sole tusk is straight and has a helical structure . In the elephant , the tusks were originally second incisors . Continuous growth is enabled by formative tissues in the apical openings of the roots of the teeth . The Asian or Asiatic elephant (" ___MASK1___ maximus ") is the only living species of the genus " ___MASK1___ " and is distributed in Southeast Asia from India in the west to Borneo in the east . Three subspecies are recognised " E . m . maximus " from Sri Lanka , the " E . m . indicus " from mainland Asia , and " E . m . sumatranus " from the island of Sumatra . Asian elephants are the largest living land animals in Asia . The Sahara (", ' the Greatest Desert ') is the largest hot desert and the third largest desert in the world after Antarctica and the Arctic . Its ___MASK20___ of is comparable to the ___MASK20___ of the United States . Moeritherium ( ' the beast from Lake Moeris ' ) is a genus consisting of several extinct species . These prehistoric mammals are related to the elephant and , more distantly , the sea cow . They lived during the Eocene epoch . A proboscis is an elongated appendage from the head of an ___MASK99___ , either a vertebrate or an invertebrate . In invertebrates , the term usually refers to tubular mouthparts used for feeding and sucking . In vertebrates , the term is used to describe an elongated nose or snout . Egypt (; ', , " Kimi "), officially the Arab Republic of Egypt , is a transcontinental country spanning the northeast corner of Africa and southwest corner of Asia by a land bridge formed by the Sinai Peninsula . Egypt is a Mediterranean country bordered by the ___MASK72___ Strip and Israel to the northeast , the Gulf of Aqaba to the east , the Red Sea to the east and south , Sudan to the south , and Libya to the west . Across the Gulf of Aqaba lies Jordan , and across from the Sinai Peninsula lies Saudi Arabia , although Jordan and Saudi Arabia do not share a land border with Egypt . It is the world ' s only contiguous Afrasian nation . The African forest elephant (" ___MASK92___ ") is a forest - dwelling species of elephant found in the Congo Basin . It is the smallest of the three extant species of elephant , but still the third - largest living terrestrial animal . The African forest elephant and the African bush elephant , " L . africana ", were considered to be one species until genetic studies indicated that they separated an estimated 2  7 million years ago . Due to a slower birth rate , the forest elephant takes longer to recover from poaching , which caused its population to fall by 65 % from 2002 to 2013 . African elephants are elephants of the genus ___MASK29___ , from Greek  ( loxós ' slanting , crosswise , oblique sided ') +  ( odoús , stem odónt -, ' tooth '). The genus consists of two extant species : the African bush elephant , " L . africana ", and the smaller African forest elephant , " L . cyclotis ". " ___MASK29___ " is one of two existing genera of the family , ___MASK32___ . Fossil remains of " ___MASK29___ " have been found only in Africa , in strata as old as the middle Pliocene . However , sequence analysis of DNA extracted from fossils of an extinct elephant species undermines the validity of the genus . Prehistory means literally " before history ", from the Latin word for " before ," ', and Greek '. ___MASK89___ prehistory is the period from the time that behaviorally and anatomically modern humans first appear until the appearance of recorded history following the invention of writing systems . Since both the time of settlement of modern humans and the evolution of ___MASK89___ civilisations differ from region to region , prehistory starts and ends at different moments in time , depending on the region concerned . The transition between the end of the Eocene and the beginning of the Oligocene is marked by large - scale extinction and floral and faunal turnover ( although minor in comparison to the largest mass extinctions ). Most of the affected organisms were marine or aquatic in nature . They included the last of the ancient cetaceans , the ___MASK19___ . The ___MASK35___ ( from the Greek and the Latin " proboscis ") are a taxonomic order of afrotherian mammals containing one living family , Elephantidae , and several extinct families . This order , first described by J . Illiger in 1811 , encompasses the trunked mammals . Later proboscideans are distinguished by tusks and long , muscular trunks ; these features are less developed or absent in early proboscideans . ___MASK35___ may have produced the largest land mammal of all time in the form of " Palaeoloxodon namadicus ", which may have weighed up to , with a shoulder height of up to , surpassing several sauropod dinosaurs . The ___MASK46___ (" ___MASK29___ africana ") is the larger of the two species of African elephant . The Paleogene ( or ; also spelled Palaeogene or Palæogene ; informally Lower Tertiary ) is a geologic period and system that spans 43 million years from the end of the Cretaceous Period million years ago ( ___MASK28___ ) to the beginning of the Neogene Period ___MASK28___ . It is the beginning of the Cenozoic Era of the present Phanerozoic Eon . The Paleogene is most notable for being the time during which mammals diversified from relatively small , simple forms into a large group of diverse animals in the wake of the Cretaceous  Paleogene extinction event that ended the preceding Cretaceous Period . Incisors ( from Latin " incidere ", " to cut ") are the front teeth present in most heterodont mammals . They are located in the premaxilla above and on the mandible below . Humans have a total of eight ( two on each side , top and bottom ). ___MASK74___ have 18 , whereas armadillos have none . The Eocene Epoch , lasting from , is a major division of the geologic timescale and the second epoch of the Paleogene Period in the Cenozoic Era . The Eocene spans the time from the end of the Paleocene Epoch to the beginning of the Oligocene Epoch . The start of the Eocene is marked by a brief period in which the concentration of the carbon isotope C in the atmosphere was exceptionally low in comparison with the more common isotope C . The end is set at a major extinction event called the " Grande Coupure " ( the " Great Break " in continuity ) or the Eocene  Oligocene extinction event , which may be related to the impact of one or more large bolides in Siberia and in what is now Chesapeake Bay . As with other geologic periods , the strata that define the start and end of the epoch are well identified , though their exact dates are slightly uncertain . ___MASK1___ is one of two surviving genera in the family of elephants , ___MASK32___ , with one surviving species , the ___MASK76___ " ___MASK1___ maximus ". Sub - Saharan Africa is , geographically , the ___MASK20___ of the continent of Africa that lies south of the Sahara desert . According to the UN , it consists of all African countries that are fully or partially located south of the Sahara . It contrasts with North Africa , whose territories are part of the League of Arab states within the Arab world . Somalia , Djibouti , Comoros and Mauritania are geographically in Sub - Saharan Africa , but are likewise Arab states and part of the Arab world . Cairo (; ', ') is the capital and largest city of Egypt . The city ' s metropolitan ___MASK20___ is the largest in the Middle East and the Arab world , and 15th - largest in the world , and is associated with ancient Egypt , as the famous Giza pyramid complex and the ancient city of Memphis are located in its geographical ___MASK20___ . Located near the Nile ___MASK33___ , modern Cairo was founded in 969 CE by Jawhar al - Siqilli (" the Sicilian ") of the Fatimid dynasty , but the land composing the present - day city was the site of ancient national capitals whose remnants remain visible in parts of Old Cairo . Cairo has long been a center of the region ' s political and cultural life , and is nicknamed " the city of a thousand minarets " for its preponderance of Islamic architecture .