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TOPIC: Cyclops

Blobrana

L

Posts: 131433

Date: May 9 07:21 2012

Dwarf mammoth	Permalink

Mini mammoth once roamed Crete Scientists can now add a 'dwarf mammoth' to the list of biological oxymorons that includes the jumbo shrimp and pygmy whale. Studies of fossils discovered last year on the island of Crete in the Mediterranean Sea reveal that an extinct species once thought to be a diminutive elephant was actually the smallest mammoth known to have existed - which, as an adult, stood no taller than a modern newborn elephant. Read more __________________

Blobrana

L

Posts: 131433

Date: Dec 13 22:03 2011

Cyclops	Permalink

A cyclops, in Greek mythology and later Roman mythology, was a member of a primordial race of giants, each with a single eye in the middle of his forehead. The name is widely thought to mean "circle-eyed". Another possible origin for the Cyclops legend, advanced by the palaeontologist Othenio Abel in 1914, is the prehistoric dwarf elephant skulls - about twice the size of a human skull - that may have been found by the Greeks on Cyprus, Crete, Malta and Sicily. Abel suggested that the large, central nasal cavity (for the trunk) in the skull might have been interpreted as a large single eye-socket. Given the inexperience of the locals with living elephants, they were unlikely to recognise the skull for what it actually was. Read more __________________

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