During the Pleistocene Ice Age, about 2.6 million to 11,700 years ago, land bridges formed, letting ancient elephants migrate to islands to escape predators or find food.
When sea levels rose, these elephants got stuck on the islands, where limited food led to the "island rule"-mammals evolve to be smaller or larger based on available resources. The isolated elephants evolved into unique species on each island. For example, Cyprus elephants grew to about 6 feet tall, much larger than those on Sicily and Malta. Humans arrived around 11,000 years ago and hunted these elephants to extinction within 100 years. By the time the Greeks and Romans arrived, only large elephant skulls remained, with a central hole mistaken for an eye socket but actually part of the trunk structure.
