Platybelodon. Illustration and photo-reconstruction of the prehistoric elephant Platybelodon. Platybelodon was a genus of large herbivorous mammal related to the elephant (order Proboscidea). It lived during the Miocene Epoch, about 15-4 million years ago, and ranged over Africa, Europe and Asia. Although it thrived during its time, it did not survive past the Miocene. Platybelodon was previously believed to have fed in the swampy areas of grassy savannas, using its teeth to shovel up aquatic and semi-aquatic vegetation. However, wear patterns on the teeth suggest that it used its lower tusks to strip bark from trees, and may have used the sharp incisors that formed the edge of the shovel more like a modern-day scythe, grasping branches with its trunk and rubbing them against the lower teeth to cut it from a tree. It was 4.5 m long, 2.2 m tall and weighed 2500 kg. Due to the shape of the two lower teeth, which are worn by many gomphothere genera (such as Platybelodon, Archaeobelodon,