CÓRDOBA, SPAIN—According to a Live Science report, a 2,250-year-old bone unearthed in 2019 during excavations directed by Agustín López Jiménez of Arqueobetica SL at the site of a fortified village in southern Spain came from the leg of an unidentified species of elephant. Rafael Martínez Sánchez of the University of Córdoba and his colleagues think that the creature may have been a war elephant during the Second Punic War, which was fought by the Romans and the Carthaginians between 218 and 201 B.C. for control of the Mediterranean. This animal may have been killed in a battle at the village, where 12 spherical stones that may have been used as catapult ammunition were also found. No other elephant bones have been recovered, however. Martínez Sánchez said that this bone, which is about the size of a baseball, might have been preserved because a wall had collapsed on it. He acknowledges that it may also have been carried away from another place as a souvenir of a so-called “tank of antiquity.” To read about the war's aftermath, go to "Spain's Silver Boom."
