1.8 million years ago, giant behemoths were commonplace throughout Europe. They were a prominent part of European wildlife, when representatives of the mega-fauna such as woolly mammoths and giant cave bears roamed the continent.
Now, paleontologists believe that climate change during the Pleistocene may have caused that hippos in Europe decreased to dwarf the size before you migrate to warmer climes.
The ancient hippos weigh about six to seven tons, far more than the modern hippopotamus, weighing up to four tons. Their ancestors had bulging eyes, which act as periscopes, when they were immersed in water.
In 2004, in Norfolk, were found fossils of these ancient giant animals. Hippos were a constant component of European wildlife for 1.4 million years.
Research directed to the concept of the evolution of animal fossils, took place all over Europe, from the German province of Thuringia, to Castel di Guido north of Rome, and Central and Eastern Italy. Fossils found were compared with a database of measurements of contemporary African and European fossil hippos.
Scientists have found a clear threshold for the size of individual samples hippos, which belong to different periods of the Pleistocene. Hippos from the early Pleistocene were the largest of all known, while smaller pieces appeared in the middle Pleistocene. Larger specimens are also not appeared for a long time at the end of the Pleistocene.
The drop in temperature and increase in precipitation during the Pleistocene caused significant changes in the life of plants across Europe as a result of the expansion of grassy steppes. Being herbivores, hippos were to succeed in this new environment.
