This painting depicts the site, in the Arabian desert in Abu Dhabi, as it might have appeared when the elephants passed through (Illustration by Mauricio Antòn).
A cluster of ancient footprints in the Arabian desert offers the clearest evidence yet for the early origins of modern elephants' social structure, according to a Yale-led research team. Roughly seven million years old, the prints represent the movements of at least 14 prehistoric elephants through the inland desert of the Arab Emirate of Abu Dhabi, anthropologists report in a paper published on Feb. 22 in Biology Letters. The research shows that early elephants exhibited social patterns typical of their modern descendants - herding by adult females and offspring, and solitary wandering by adult males. "It is definitely clear that you have two social modes in elephants at this time," said Yale anthropologist Andrew Hill, a senior researcher on the project. Plainly visible in the crusty surface of the desert, the footprints were known to researchers for several years. But the inherent relationships among them only became clear after researchers produced and analyzed a detailed photo mosaic of the area using high-resolution aerial cameras.
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