If elephants weren’t around anymore to look at, we could potentially notice similarities with the tapir and extrapolate a trunk based on the shape of and connective area on the elephant’s skull. We’d have to guess at the specific properties of the trunk, but at least we’d know it was there and be able to support arguments for things like its size without them being pure guesswork.
Without a similar animal I don’t know how close we’d get. Maybe it would be a mystery that inspires wild speculation.
How do those techniques work starting from and elephant skull? Would they guess it had a trunk? Really big nose?
If elephants weren’t around anymore to look at, we could potentially notice similarities with the tapir and extrapolate a trunk based on the shape of and connective area on the elephant’s skull. We’d have to guess at the specific properties of the trunk, but at least we’d know it was there and be able to support arguments for things like its size without them being pure guesswork.
Without a similar animal I don’t know how close we’d get. Maybe it would be a mystery that inspires wild speculation.
I realized just now that I didn’t know how an anteater’s mug works, and, well…