Elephants may have played surprising role in early human survival, study suggests

Elephants are widely adored by many people today — but a recent study suggests early humans were butchering them for survival nearly 2 million years ago.

A group of international researchers found what they describe as "the earliest direct evidence of proboscidean butchery," including a newly identified elephant butchery site, according to an article published in the spring in the journal eLife.

Modern elephants are the only living proboscideans today — a group that once included woolly mammoths and mastodons.