A recent study of ancient and modern elephants has come up with the unexpected conclusion that the African elephant is divided into two distinct(不同的) species.
The discovery was made by researchers at York and Harvard Universities when they were examining the genetic relationship between the ancient woolly mammoth and mastod
on to modern elephants—the Asian elephant, African forest elephant, and African savanna elephant.
Once they obtained DNA sequences (序列)from two fossils (化石), mammoths and mastodons, the team compared them with DNA from modern elephants. They found to their amazement that modern forest and savanna elephants are as distinct from each other as Asian elephants and mammoths.
