A research team from the Geological Survey Institute (GSI) and the University of Wollongong (UOW) recently excavated an almost complete 200,000-year-old elephant skeleton from a terrace adjacent to the Solo River in East Java, Indonesia.

Close-up of some of the elephant bones excavated from the site in Indonesia Photo courtesy of Iwan Kurniawan from the Geological Survey Institute

It was first exposed in the walls of a sand quarry but took the researchers almost four weeks to remove the overlying sand, excavate the bones, and encase them in plaster for transport back to the Geology Museum in Bandung, West Java.

When properly conserved and assembled, the skeleton will later be displayed in the museum. The find has already triggered widespread interest among the Indonesian media and general public.

“This is a really significant find”, said Dr Gert van den Bergh, a UOW palaeontologist who helped with the excavation and will analyse the remains.

“It is one of the most complete elephant skeletons ever recovered in Indonesia, is of an extinct species and is of enormous size — much bigger than modern-day Asian elephants with the femur alone being 1.2 metres long,” Dr van den Bergh said.

“Normally, such dead animals would have been ripped apart and eaten by carnivores. Last year, for instance, the same team found the skull of an enormous tiger in the same general area. But it appears that the elephant became bogged in the river shallows, perished and was quickly covered by sands – about 200,000 years ago.  Parts of the skeleton were still articulated when found,” he said.

The excavation was part of collaborative research project between Indonesian and Australian researchers led by institutional counterparts Professor Mike Morwood (UOW) and Professor Fachroel Aziz (GSI). The project is funded by the Australian Research Council.

University of Wollongong