Platybelodon, the "Flat-Speared Tusk," certainly attracts attention with its intriguing incisors! Platybelodon stood around two meters tall, approximately the same size as modern Asian elephants. However, coming from the Gomphoteriidae family, it is not a true elephant (no matter how much it looks like an awkward cousin with an underbite). Both elephants and gomphotheres tend to have the iconic trunks and tusks on their upper jaws; their lower jaws are where their differences are the most obvious. Platybelodon's lower jaw is broad, flat, and long like a shovel, and originally it was thought that it used this shovel-jaw to scoop up aquatic vegetation in swamps. Nowadays, scientists think that the sharp, flat teeth at the end of the jaw made a good surface for scraping bark and sawing branches off of trees. This proud proboscidean lived in the grassy Neogene savannas of Africa and Asia, where it sought out enough vegetation to sustain its large body. Like its modern relatives, Platybelodon likely had few predators. However, some Platybelodon bones are preserved with bite marks from the giant shark Otodus megalodon! These bite marks indicate that either their carcasses washed out to sea and were scavenged or that they occassionally went for dangerous dips in the ocean.