Ivory from the mystery species was recovered from an ancient wreck off the coast of Spain (Image: National Museum of Underwater Archaeology)

       Remains of extinct elephants thought to belong to the same species that Hannibal famously used to cross the alps are providing data to aid the conservation of their modern relatives.

       Ivory from the mystery species has been recovered from the wreck of a Phoenician ship that sank off the coast of Spain more than 2,500 years ago.

       The vessel is thought to have been carrying luxury goods from the eastern Mediterranean and North Africa when it ran aground off of Bajo de la Campana, near Cartagena.

       Some of the doomed vessel’s cargo was washed into a sea cave, where they were rediscovered by a team of archaeologists back in 2007.

       It was among these lost treasures — including ceramic and bronze artefacts, copper and tin ingots, nuggets of precious ore and gemstones — that the elephant tusks were found.

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       Pictured: Hannibal's war elephants depicted crossing the Rh？ne (Image: Henri Motte)

       Evolutionary biologist Dr Patrícia Pe？nerová of the University of Copenhagen in Denmark told Horizon: “If the ship was sailing from North Africa, the ivory could reprepresent the North African elephant population, which went extinct at some point during Roman times.”

       She added: “We don’t really know anything at all about these elephants — as there are few historical records.”

       What is suspected, however, is that these were the same kinds of elephants led over the alps by the Carthaginian general Hannibal to attack Roman Italy in 218 BC, during the Second Punic War.

       Experts believe that North African elephants likely had a range that covered the land north of the Sahara Desert, and possibly along the east coast down to Sudan and Eritrea — but it has long been unclear what species they belonged to.

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       The vessel carrying the tusks ran aground off of Bajo de la Campana (Image: Mark Polzer)

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       Dr Pe？nerová explained: “Some people think they might have been African savanna elephants, based on what is more plausible from the biological perspective.

       “But others say they were probably small, so might have been African forest elephants.”

       These are not the only theories, either. Some experts believe that Hannibal’s creatures might have been Asian elephants — while some have proposed a separate species altogether.

       The remains from the Bajo de la Campana shipwreck, the researchers said, affords a rare opportunity to sequence generic data on these extinct elephants and determine their origins.

       Dr Pe？nerová added: “The shipwreck ivory is a window to the past. We are looking at elephants as they were 2,500 years ago, predating the many anthropogenic pressures of today.”

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       In her research, part of the EU-funded “STAMPEDE” project, Dr Pe？nerová has been mapping out the genetic diversity of present-day elephants from across Africa — which provided a reference against which can now compare ancient DNA extracted from the Bajo de la Campana ivory.

       The investigation has more than just historical application, however — with Dr Pe？nerová explaining that tools developed during the research could also be applied to analyse the genetic diversity of living elephants and help to inform conservation efforts.

       Furthermore, studying the ancient tusks could help scientists to figure out how genetically diverse elephants were before humans started intensively hunting them and wiping out their habitats — and how much cause we have to be concerned now.

       While some species are capable of surviving with low levels of genetic diversity, it could be that conservation programmes need to be fine-tuned to focus on increasing such.

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