proboscidean, (order Proboscidea), any of the group of mammals that includeselephants and their extinct relatives such asmammoths andmastodons. Although only three species of elephant areextant today, more than 160 extinct proboscidean species have been identified from remains found on all continents except Australia and Antarctica. Most of these were calledgomphotheres, which belonged to a different family from elephants. Elephants and mammoths both belong to the only surviving proboscidean family, Elephantidae.

Within the elephant family,Asian elephants (genusElephas) and mammoths (genusMammathus) are more closely related to one another thanAfrican elephants (genusLoxodonta) are to either. Molecular studies havecorroborated the morphological studies that have long suggested this. A 2010 study using mitochondrial DNA suggests that African elephants diverged from the Asian elephant-mammoth line between 4.2 million and 9 million years ago and then split into forest and savanna varieties between about 2.5 million and 5.6 million years ago. During that later time period, Asian elephants diverged from mammoths. The mastodons that roamedNorth America until 10,000 years ago are more distantly related and belong to a separate family, Mammutidae.

Elephants, mastodons, and mammoths all have upper incisor teeth that emerge from the skull astusks. The first proboscideans, however, had three small sets of incisors in each jaw.Moeritherium, atapir-sizedmammal that lived some 35 million years ago, had upper and lower incisors representing an early stage in proboscidean tusk development. Some proboscideans, called “shovel-tuskers,” developed a pair of long and broad lower incisors used for digging. Many, including the gomphotheres, had upper and lower pairs of tusks, whereas others had tusks only in thelower jaw.

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The earliest proboscideans date to the latePaleocene Epoch (61 to 54.8 million years ago) in northeastern Africa. They stood less than a metre (3.3 feet) at the shoulder and did not possess a trunk. Because thetrunk is made of soft tissue that does not fossilize, paleontological evidence for it comes from knowledge of the elephant’s cranium, which contains an opening (external naris) low on the forehead where the trunk begins. Generally in mammals the external naris is situated near the front of the mouth, whereas in elephants the naris is enlarged, deepened, and located higher and farther back. Another important clue for the presence of a trunk is an enlarged opening (infraorbital canal) below the eye socket through which blood and lymph vessels and nerves pass to nourish and innervate the trunk. The combination of an elevated and enlarged external naris and an enlarged infraorbital canal is interpreted as an indication that an extinct species may have possessed a trunk.Skulls with the single narial opening are theorized to have inspired themyth of theCyclops.

The living mammals most closely related to proboscideans are themanatees and thedugongs—marine mammals of the orderSirenia. Proboscideans and sirenians are together classified astethytherians, in reference to the ancient sea ofTethys, where both groups are hypothesized to have originated. On land the closest proboscidean relative is thehyrax (order Hyracoidea), a small rodentlikeanimal of Africa and southwestern Asia. Tethytheria and Hyracoidea are grouped together as Uranotheria.