Indricotherium pervum

Prehistoric animal. Indricotherium pervum. Original oil painting by Josef Moravec. Indricotherium is in the Art Collection of Dinosaur Corporation. Size 24" x 18".

Indricotherium is a genus of extinct mammals that lived in Asia during the late Oligocene and early Miocene epoch of the Tertiary Period (37-32 million years ago). Indricotherium is the largest land mammal known, rivaling in size with the gigantic Mammuthus sungari. The mean size of adults is estimated to have been 5.2 m (18 ft) tall, 8.2 m (27 ft) in length [1] and a weight of about 15 tons. It was a herbivore that stripped leaves from trees with its down-pointing, tusk-like upper teeth that occluded forward-pointing lower teeth. It had a long, low, hornless skull and vaulted frontal and nasal bones. Its front teeth were reduced to a single pair of incisors in either jaw, but they were conical and so large that they looked like small tusks. The upper incisors pointed straight downwards, while the lower ones jutted outwards. The upper lip was evidently extremely mobile. The neck was very long, the trunk robust, and the limbs long and thick, column-like.

These giant animals seem to have been limited to central Asia and southernmost parts of Pakistan, for their fossils have not been found elsewhere. Indricotherium inhabited dry grasslands with a few trees, where it congregated in small herds. Its type of dentition, its mobile upper lip and its long legs and neck indicate that it lived on the leaves and twigs of tall trees, which it cropped like present-day giraffes.