Lydekker, Richard (1908) The Game Animals of Africa, R. Ward, pp. 74-75

At a meeting of the Zoological Society of London held on November 14, 1905, the Hon. Walter Rothschild exhibited two tusks obtained by Baron Maurice de Rothschild in Abyssinia, which were then regarded as so unlike normal tusks of any known animal as to suggest the possibility of their belonging to some unknown creature. Of one of these tusks Mr. Rothschild subsequently presented a cast to the British Museum. This cast indicates a highly curved and much flattened tusk of about 2 feet in length, marked on the broad concave surface by a number of bold longitudinal flutings. In 1907 Mr. L. D. Gosling presented to the Museum three small tusks of female elephants obtained during the Alexander-Gosling expedition from Lake Tchad to the Congo, one of which presents a most striking resemblance to the cast. It is, indeed, considerably smaller and less sharply curved, but is of the same general contour, and likewise bears distinct traces of longitudinal flutings on the flattened concave surface, although these are less numerous than in the original specimen, and have been to a considerable extent obliterated by wear. A third specimen of the same general type is preserved in the Berlin Museum.

The Abyssinian and the British Museum specimens have been described in the Archives de Zoologie Experimental et Generate for 1907 by Baron de Rothschild and Mr. H. Neuville, who regard the former as probably belonging to some unknown animal. All three specimens show, however, the characteristic structure of ivory, and, in my opinion, are abnormal cow-elephant tusks.

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