Timeline

*Plain text denotes geological ‘eras’, some of which are typically broken into shorter ‘epochs’, which are named in italics.

When	Geological time*	What happened
~100 million years ago (mya)	Cretaceous period	Afrotheria lineage, which includes elephants, splits from other mammalian lineages, including the branch that led to humans and other primates. This is the date of the last common ancestor between humans and elephants.
65mya	Cretaceous period	Extinction of the dinosaurs.
~65–55mya	Palaeocene epoch of Paleogene period	Evolution of first proboscideans, when the lineage that resulted in elephants split from that of the hyraxes and manatees. These early proboscideans were all extinct by ~30mya.
~30–25mya	Late Oligocene	Evolution of deinotheres in Africa, which subsequently colonised southern Asia and Europe. The deinothere group died out ~1mya.
~25mya	Late Oligocene	Evolution of mastodons in Africa, which colonised most of the northern hemisphere. The last of the mastodons died out around 10,000 years ago.
~24mya	Late Oligocene or early Miocene	Evolution of gomphotheres, which colonised North, Central, and South America, and Eurasia. Extinction less than 10,000 years ago.
~12–10mya	Miocene	Evolution of elephantoids, the super-family that contains today’s elephant species.
~8–6mya	Late Miocene	Last common ancestor between Loxodonta lineage and Asian elephant/mammoth lineage.
~7–6mya	Late Miocene	Last common ancestor between humans and our closest living relative, the chimpanzees.
~7–5.5mya	Late Miocene	Mammoth and Asian elephant lineages split.
~5.5–5mya	Late Miocene	Loxodonta africana (savannah elephant) and Loxodonta cyclotis (forest elephant) lineages split.
~5mya	Start of Pliocene	Earth cools and becomes drier, forest cover shrinks.
~3mya	End of Pliocene	Migration of Elephas species from Africa to Asia.
~2mya	Start of Pleistocene epoch of Quaternary period	Rapid cooling of Earth.
		Appearance of human lineage, Homo.
~500,000 years ago	Pleistocene	Clear evidence from stone tools that Homo species were hunting proboscids.
~195,000 years ago	Pleistocene	Earliest known fossils of our own species – anatomically modern humans – Homo sapiens.
50–30,000 years ago	Pleistocene	Extinction of Palaeoloxodons (straight-tusked elephants) from mainland Europe and Britain.
15–10,000 years ago	Late Pleistocene to early Holocene	Extinction of most proboscids across the Americas, Europe and Asia. Homo sapiens settles most parts of the planet.
~6,000 years ago	Holocene	Extinction of last gomphotheres in South America, and last Palaeoloxodons in Greek islands.
~5,000 years ago (3000 BC)	Holocene	First evidence of Asian elephants being captured and trained in India.
~4,000 years ago (2000 BC)	Holocene	Extinction of last woolly mammoths from Wrangel Island in Siberia.
~2,000 years ago (218 BC)	Holocene	Hannibal crosses the Alps with an army of African elephants.
~1,500 years ago (AD 500)	Holocene	The last elephants disappear in North Africa.
~500-100 years ago (1500–1920)	Holocene	Expansion of agriculture in Africa; European colonisation and ivory trade grows; the demise of Africa’s elephants begins.
1920–2019	Holocene	Massive boom in human population. Elephant numbers drop from 12 million to less than 415,000.