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Fossils of ten Cypriot pygmy hippos have been found during excavations on the Greek island of Crete, which can be dated back to 350,000 BC. Paleontologist Giorgos Lyras spoke of a “significant discovery” on Monday.

The Cypriot pygmy hippopotamus is an extinct hippopotamus species that lived on the island of Cyprus. Weighing 200 kilograms, it was about the same weight and size as the pygmy hippopotamus living today. It still occurs in small populations in Liberia, Sierra Leone, Guinea and Ivory Coast.

For the first time “such a high concentration of pygmy hippopotamus fossils from Cyprus has been found in Greece,” the expert from the University of Athens told the French news agency AFP.

The university’s excavations began last week at Mount Katharo in the east of the island at an elevation of 1,100 meters and will continue through next weekend. “We expect to find an even greater number of hippopotamus fossils,” Lyras said.

Their existence has been known since the 18th century, but “this is the first time scientific excavations have been carried out to bring them to light”. In September, the excavations will continue until the winter break.

The Cypriot pygmy river-dwellers may have attained their short stature through the evolutionary biological phenomenon of island reduction, in which the body size of a species on an island devoid of predators decreases significantly over generations.

Fossils of other endemic animals have already been discovered on the Greek Aegean islands, such as dwarf elephants on the Dodecanese islands of Tilos and Rhodes or on the Cyclades island of Naxos. (sda/afp)