A few years ago, Helena Gianouri, a child at the time, discovered, in the area of Gela, Agia Fotia, in a plot of land belonging to Nikolaos Meramveliotakis, one of the most important paleontological findings in Greece, in the whole world in fact: an almost complete skeleton of a large tusked-animal. A distant relative of modern-day elephants. The study showed that the fossilized bones and teeth belonged to a gigantic deinotherium with downward curving tusks attached to the lower jaw.
Based on the bones that have been collected so far it is estimated that the animal reached a height of 4.5-5metres and that its length reached 6.5 metres. Thus, the deinotherium is considered the largest animal ever to live in Crete. The age of the deposits containing the bones of the prehistoric animal is estimated at around 8-9 million years.
The deinotherium of Agia Fotia is considered a rare finding, as the existence of complete deinotherium skeletons in the world is limited. Deinotheriums were most probably woodland type animals, that, judging from the shape of their teeth, seem to have been vegetarian and to have fed on tree-leaves. They most probably used their tusks to cut undergrowth, to dig up roots, or simply to show off.
It is certain that the discovery of the Deinotherium in Crete was not a random event, as Crete had an extensive amount of wooded land at the time. The Aegean did not exist and Crete was joined with continental Greece and Anatolia.
Thus, an extensive amount of research is required in order to complete the excavation process in the spot in question; the research will also help in the tracking down of new locations that will enrich our knowledge about Crete and the fauna of that period.
Writer: Giorgos Iliopoulos - Director of Geological and Paleontological collections of the Natural History Museum of Heraklion.
Source: Tribute to Agia Fotia- Cultural and Archaeological Information May 2009
Translated and edited by: Yallou