Heritage of Japan

Recommended field trip

Visit the Nojiriko Museum or Lake Nojiri Naumann Elephant Museum where exhibits of Naumann Elephant fossils as well as of Big-horned deer and stone tool and bone tool artefacts are on display.

Besides Lake Nojiri, many fossils have been dredged up from sea bottom of the Naruto Straits and specimens may be seen at Tokushima Prefectural Museum.

Visit the Naumann Elephant Commemoration Hall to see its Naumann Elephant fossil exhibit. This hall displays the fossilized remains of a Naumann’s elephant discovered during road development work in 1969. A reproduction skeleton of this 4.3 m. long beast and other related materials are also displayed. Located alongside Churui Michi-no-Eki – a roadside station on Route 236, the address is: 383-1 Churuishirogane-machi, Makubetsu-cho, Nakagawa-gun, Hokkaido.

Access: From JR Obihiro Station: 47 mins by Tokachi bus bound for Taiki / Hiroo, From Naumanzo-Kinenkan-Mae bus stop: immediate access. Phone: 01558-8-2826 

See a fossil footprint of a Naumann Elephant at this page.

Facts about the Akebono Elephant aka Stegodon aurorae:

The Akebono Elephant, a member of the Stegodon Family, existed from the Late Tertiary Period to the Early Pleistocene Epoch of the Quaternary Period, long before the Naumann’s Elephants or mammoths existed. In 1975, some fossilized teeth were found in the Iruma River. Since 1985, museum staff of the Saitama Museum of Natural History  discovered enough fossil teeth to restore a complete skeleton of the Akebono Elephant. Visit the Saitama Museum of Natural History or the Kawasaki City Youth Science Centre where you can see closeup a Akebono Elephant fossil skeleton and teeth.

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