Elephants in ancient China Elephants in ancient China The existence of elephants in ancient China is attested both by archaeological evidence and by depictions in Chinese artwork. Long thought to belong to an extinct subspecies of Asian elephants, named "Elephas maximus rubridens", they lived in Central and Southern China before the 14th century BC. They once occurred as far north as Anyang, Henan in northern China. The elephant is mentioned in the earliest received texts, including the "Shijing", "Liji", and "Zuozhuan." The oracle bone script and bronzeware script glyphs for elephant are pictographic depictions of an animal with a long trunk. Their modern descendant
Mastodon (steam locomotive) the engine, where more than 20 copies were produced; these were identical except for having their cylinder bore increased to (from "Mastodon"'s ). The success of this engine inspired railroad president Leland Stanford to instruct Stevens to build an even larger locomotive, which would be the largest the world had ever seen up until that time. This engine, a 4-10-0 named "El Gobernador" (CPRR #237), looked virtually identical to "Mastodon", with the exception of being longer and having an additional pair of driving wheels. Unfortunately, this engine, unlike its predecessor, was doomed to failure. Sometime in the early 20th century,