Scientists say they have calculated the date at which the African and the Asian elephant went their separate ways The two elephant species diverged from a common ancestor some 7.6 million years ago They came to their conclusion after comparing a genetic analysis of the two species with material derived from the extinct woolly mammoth and mastodon.
 The mastodon was similar to the woolly mammoth
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Its genetic profile had not previously been mapped, but now thanks to the analysis of material extracted from a fossilised tooth found on the banks of an Alaskan river, scientists have the first genetic portrait of the creature.
"The cool thing about the mastodon is that we know pretty exactly from the fossil record when it diverged from the elephant and the mammoth," said Dr Michael Hofreiter of the Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology in Leipzig, one of the lead researchers.
"That took place in Africa in the same place where humans, chimps and gorillas diverged."
That is all human species with the exception of politicians and the idiots who dogmatically vote for them!!!
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