A family of extinct large mammals from the Miocene to Pleistocene epochs, related to elephants but with downward-curved tusks.
From Greek 'deinos' (terrible) + 'therion' (beast) + Latin '-idae' (family suffix), first identified in 1829 by French paleontologist Jean Léopold César Deserres.
Deinotheres are wonderfully weird—they're like evolution's experimental design where an elephant cousin decided tusks should point DOWN instead of up, possibly for stripping bark from trees rather than showing off or fighting.
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