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This Platybelodon Skull with steel base is 53 inches long, 16 inches wide and 24 inches high on the stand. The skull and jaws have all 12 molars. The largest single molar is 7.5 inches long and 2.5 inches wide. The upper tusks are 11 inches long. The lower tusks are 7.5 inches long and 11 inches wide.
Scientific Name: Platybelodon grangeri Location: Gansu Province, China Age: Late Miocene, 7 MYA

Platybelodon ("flat-spear tusk") or shovel tusker was a genus of large herbivorous mammal related to the elephant (order Proboscidea). It lived during the late Miocene Epoch in Asia and the Caucasus.

Platybelodon was very similar to Amebelodon, another, closely related gomphothere genus. Due to the shape of the two lower teeth, in common with many gomphothere genera (such as Platybelodon, Archaeobelodon, Konobelodon, and Amebelodon), they are popularly known as "shovel tuskers."

Platybelodon was previously believed to have fed in the swampy areas of grassy savannas, using its teeth to shovel up aquatic and semi-aquatic vegetation. However, wear patterns on the teeth suggest that it used its lower tusks to strip bark from trees, and may have used the sharp incisors that formed the edge of the "shovel" more like a modern-day scythe, grasping branches with its trunk and rubbing them against the lower teeth to cut it from a tree. Adult animals in particular might have eaten coarser vegetation more frequently than juveniles.

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