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<p>[QUOTE=&quot;areich, post: 1504181, member: 37479&quot;]<b>Tanzania and the African Elephant</b></p><p><br /></p><p>Quick Quiz</p><p><br /></p><p>What does elephants,&nbsp; dugongs , manatees, and hyraxes have in common? That are all evolutionary cousins of each other and closely related.&nbsp; Elephants closest living relatives are Hyraxes and they are all under the clad Paenungulata.&nbsp; This has been confirmed not only by cladistics, but also genetic molecular studies.</p><p><br /></p><p>The evolution of Elephants is a study in the power of evolutionary divergence and radial adaptivity.&nbsp; About.com has an excellent series of webpages on elephant evolution.</p><p><br /></p><p><img src="http://elephant.elehost.com/About_Elephants/Stories/Evolution/ancestry.gif" class="bbCodeImage wysiwygImage" alt="" unselectable="on" /></p><p><br /></p><p><a href="http://dinosaurs.about.com/od/mesozoicmammals/a/elephants.htm" target="_blank" class="externalLink ProxyLink" data-proxy-href="http://dinosaurs.about.com/od/mesozoicmammals/a/elephants.htm" rel="nofollow">http://dinosaurs.about.com/od/mesozoicmammals/a/elephants.htm</a></p><p><br /></p><p>There is also a wonderful gallery of of images of prehistoric and current elephants.</p><p><a href="http://dinosaurs.about.com/od/dinosaurpictures/ig/Elephant-Pictures/" target="_blank" class="externalLink ProxyLink" data-proxy-href="http://dinosaurs.about.com/od/dinosaurpictures/ig/Elephant-Pictures/" rel="nofollow">http://dinosaurs.about.com/od/dinosaurpictures/ig/Elephant-Pictures/</a></p><p><br /></p><p><img src="http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/3/37/African_Bush_Elephant.jpg/400px-African_Bush_Elephant.jpg" class="bbCodeImage wysiwygImage" alt="" unselectable="on" /></p><p><br /></p><p>There are three or possibly four current species, two African and one Asian and possibly one more African species in West Africa.&nbsp; In addition to these, Mastodons and Mammoths but have lived into the historical period, to about 2,00 years ago, although largely gone at about 10,000 years ago and squeezed into isolated pockets.&nbsp; The Asian Elephant is more closely related to Woolly Mammoth than the African Elephant.&nbsp; The Scientific name for the African Elephant, or more specifically the&nbsp; African Savanna Elephant&nbsp; is Loxodonta Africana.&nbsp; As a side note, the two species of African Elephant, Bush and Forrest, as as closely related as the Asian Elephant the Mammoth. </p><p><br /></p><p>Tanzania has release in 1986 the 100 Shilingi 0.925 Silver Proof coin celebrating the threatened African elephant.&nbsp; Home to Mt Kilimanjaro, Tanzania is a wonderful East African nation which shares Lake Victoria on in the North and just south of Kenya and East of the Congo.&nbsp; The coin is minted by the British Royal mint and weighs 19.44 grams and a diameter of 36.00mm.</p><p><br /></p><p>This is a truly outstanding coin and unlike most world coins, the obverse is absolutely as wonderful and the reverse.&nbsp; The obverse is of the President Julius Nyerere and is one of the few coins to note depict a Caucasian or European face.&nbsp; Not only that, but the image beautifully depicts realistically an obviously man African Decent without stereotype and without the troubles that many artisits have in depicting Africans.&nbsp; it reminds me of Rembrandt’s &quot;Two Moors&quot; in <a href="http://www.mauritshuis.nl/index.aspx?siteid=40" target="_blank" class="externalLink ProxyLink" data-proxy-href="http://www.mauritshuis.nl/index.aspx?siteid=40" rel="nofollow">The Mauritsuis</a>, one of the great museums in the world but unfortunately closed until 2014.</p><p><br /></p><p><img src="http://www.mrbrklyn.com/images/twomoors_sm.jpg" class="bbCodeImage wysiwygImage" alt="" unselectable="on" /></p><p><br /></p><p>Two Moors is a wonderful work by Rembrandt, sensitive and deep in humanity, especially considering that Rembrandt has probably never seen a Black African.</p><p><br /></p><p>I have two images of the obverse, one head on and usual, and one from a slant so one can appreciate fully the depth and beauty of the devices.</p><p><br /></p><p><img src="http://www.mrbrklyn.com/wwf/elephant_r_d.png" class="bbCodeImage wysiwygImage" alt="" unselectable="on" /></p><p><img src="http://www.mrbrklyn.com/wwf/elephant_r_c.jpg" class="bbCodeImage wysiwygImage" alt="" unselectable="on" /></p><p><br /></p><p><img src="http://www.mrbrklyn.com/wwf/elephant_o_b.jpg" class="bbCodeImage wysiwygImage" alt="" unselectable="on" />[/QUOTE]</p><p><br /></p>

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