Today's placid scenes along the verdant shores of Greece's Pinios River, in Thessaly, belie its ancient history as the home of hippopotamuses, bison and even elephants, according to geologist/paleontologist and professor Athanassios Athanassiou.
Today’s placid scenes along the verdant shores of Greece’s Pinios River, in Thessaly, belie its ancient history as the home of hippopotamuses, bison and even elephants, according to geologist/paleontologist and professor Athanassios Athanassiou. His recent study, entitled “The Paleolithic World of Pinios,” describes numerous fossilized remains of mammals discovered in the Pinios River basin which are between 30,000 and 45,000 years old.
The large animals, some of which are now only found in Africa and Asia, roamed the Pinios river valley during the Upper Pleistocene era, which began 180,000 years ago and includes a vast swath of human history, ending just 10,000 years ago, when humans had begun to form settlements.
For historical scale, it is noted that the city of Jericho, one of the first cities in the entire world, was first settled in 11,000 BC. Cows were domesticated for the first time in Africa and the Middle East in 10,000 BC.
Athanassiou’s study mentions, among other fossils found in the valley, those belonging to relatives of modern-day elephants (Elephas antiquus), wild bulls (Bos primigenius, or aurochs), and buffalo (Bubalus cf. arnee).
There are also remains of ibex (Capra ibex), antelope (Saiga tatarica), rhinoceros (Stephanorhinus hemitoechus), horses (Equus ferus and Equus hydruntinus), hippopotamuses (Hippopotamus sp.), deer species (Cervus sp., Dama sp. and Capreolus capreolus), as well as the extinct “Irish deer” (Megaloceros sp.).
