Tori Herridge on ancient dwarf elephants and frozen mammoths

The Life Scientific

BBC

Technology, Personal Journals, Society & Culture, Science

4.6 • 1.4K Ratings

🗓️ 25 March 2025

⏱️ 29 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

Elephants are the largest living land mammal and today our plant is home to three species: the African bush elephant, the African forest elephant, and the Asian elephant.

But a hundred thousand years ago, in the chilly depths of the Ice Age, multiple species of elephant roamed the earth: from dog-sized dwarf elephants to towering woolly mammoths.

These gentle giants' evolutionary story and its parallels with that of humankind has long fascinated Dr Tori Herridge, a senior lecturer in evolutionary biology at the University of Sheffield, where - as a seasoned science broadcaster - she's also responsible for their Masters course in Science Communication.

Tori has spent much of her life studying fossil elephants and the sites where they were excavated; trying to establish facts behind relics that are far beyond the reach of Radio Carbon Dating. To date she's discovered dwarf mammoths on Mediterranean islands, retraced the groundbreaking Greek expedition of a female palaeontologist in the early 1900s, and even held an ancient woolly mammoth’s liver. (Verdict: stinky.)

But as she tells Profesor Jim Al-Khalili, this passion for fossil-hunting is not just about understanding the past: this information is what will help us protect present-day elephants and the world around them for future generations.

Presented by Jim Al-Khalili Produced for BBC Studios by Lucy Taylor

Transcript

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0:22.6	You're about to listen to the latest series of the Life Scientific.
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0:40.3	BBC Sounds, music, radio, podcasts.
0:44.7	Once upon a time, about 100,000 years ago in the chilly depths of the Ice Age,
0:50.4	multiple species of elephant roamed the earth.
0:53.4	They travelled the globe, adapting habitats to their needs
0:56.6	and evolving to accommodate new pressures,
0:59.5	actually remarkably similar to our own evolutionary history.
1:03.0	And this is what fascinates today's guest,
1:05.6	Tori Heridge, a senior lecturer in evolutionary biology
1:08.8	at the University of Sheffield and a seasoned science
1:11.9	broadcaster. Fascinated by fossil elephants and their evolutionary parallels with humanity,
1:18.5	Torrey has spent much of her life studying such relics and the sites where they were excavated,
1:23.7	trying to establish facts about fossils that are tens of thousands of years old.
1:28.3	During her career, Tori has so far discovered dwarf mammoths on Mediterranean islands,
1:33.3	retraced the groundbreaking Greek expedition of a female paleontologist in the early 1900s,
1:38.9	and even held in ancient woolly mammoths liver.
	...

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