Peter's going to love this Washington Post story:

Six New Species of Prehistoric Mammals Discovered in Africa

Five of the new species are Proboscidea, or "trunked animals," the report said. These included three species of Palaeomastodon, four-foot-tall one-ton mammals with short trunks and tusks on the upper and lower jaws:

"They probably seemed like weird-looking pigs," said University of Michigan paleontologist William J. Sanders, another member of the team. The Chilga discoveries are the most recent palaeomastodons ever found. The animals apparently went extinct in Africa and never crossed to Eurasia.

The team also discovered remains of a new species of Deinotherium, another short-trunked animal with downturned tusks on its lower jaw. The Chilga fossil -- the oldest deinothere ever found -- was "about halfway between a large pig and a small hippo" in size, Sanders said. Deinotheres migrated to Eurasia, dispersed widely and evolved to elephant size before dying out about 1 million years ago, he said.

Chilga's fifth trunked animal was the earliest known species of Gomphotherium, a one-ton ancestor of modern elephants, which migrated to Eurasia and spread everywhere on Earth except Australia and Antarctica.

And finally, the excavators also discovered the largest and latest example of Arsinoitherium, a fearsome-looking beast with two divergent horns in its forehead. Before the Chilga discoveries, scientists speculated that the arsinoitheres lost a battle for habitat with the later-arriving Eurasian rhino, with which it shares a resemblance -- but no relation.