Samotherium 2015 study found that "Samotherium" had a neck intermediate in length between the giraffe and the okapi, judging from examination of specimens of "S. major" from Greece. Samotherium Samotherium ("beast of Samos") is an extinct genus of Giraffidae from the Miocene and Pliocene of Eurasia and Africa. "Samotherium" had two ossicones on its head, and long legs. The ossicones usually pointed upward, and were curved backwards, with males having larger, more curved ossicones, though, in the Chinese species, "S. sinense", the straight ossicones point laterally, not upwards. The genus is closely related to "Shansitherium". According to biologist Richard Ellis and
Giraffe living giraffes consist of multiple species. The researchers suggested the existence of four species, which have not exchanged genetic information between each other for 1 million to 2 million years. Those four species are the northern giraffe ("G. camelopardalis"), southern giraffe ("G. giraffa"), reticulated giraffe ("G. reticulata"), and Masai giraffe ("G. tippelskirchi"). Since then, a response to this publication has been published, highlighting seven problems in data interpretation, and concludes "the conclusions should not be accepted unconditionally". In 2016 there were an estimated 90,000 individuals of "Giraffa" in the wild. In 2010 there were more than 1,600 in captivity at