A recent study of ancient and modern elephants has come up with the unexpected conclusion that the african elephant is divided into two disinct （不同的）species．

The discovery was made by researchers at York and Harvard Universities when they were examining the genetic relationship between the ancient woolly mammoth and mastodon to modern elephants----the Asian elephant，African forest elephant and African savanna elephant．

Once they obtained DNA sequences （序列） from two fossils （化石），mammoths and mastodons，the team compared them with DNA from modern elephants，they found to their amazement that modern forest and savanna elephants are as distinct from each other as Asian elephants and mammoths．

The scientists used detailed genetic analysis to prove that the African savanna elephants and Afican forest elephants have been distinct species for several million years the divergenceof the two species took place around the time of the divergence of Asian elephants and woolly mammoths，this result amazed all the scienitsts

There has long been debate in the scientific community that the two might be separate species，but this is the most convincing scientific evidence so far that they are indeed different species．

Previously，many naturalists believed that African savanna elephants and African forest elephants were two populations of the same species despite the elephants’significant size differences，the savanna elelphant has an average shoulder height of 3.5metres while the forest elephant has an average shoulder height of 2.5metres，the savanna elephant welghs between six and seven tons，roughly double the weight of the forest elephant，but the fact that they look so different does not neccssarily mean they are different species，however the proof lay in the analysis of the DNA．

Alfred Roca，assistant professor in the Department of Animal Sciences at the University of Illinois，said“we now have to treat the forest and savanna eleph