Numidotherium ("Numidia beast") is an extinct genus of early proboscideans, discovered in 1984, that lived during the middle Eocene of North Africa some 46 million years ago. It was about 90-100 cm tall at the shoulder and weighed about 250-300 kg. The type species, N. koholense, is known from an almost complete skeleton from the site of El Kohol, southern Algeria, dating from the early/middle Eocene period. The animal had the size and the appearance of a modern tapir. In appearance, it was more slender and more plantigrade than an elephant, its closest modern relative.<ref name="mahdoubietal1986" / Numidotherium savagei, named by Court (1995) for material from late Eocene deposits at Dor el Talha, Libya, has been reassigned to its own genus, Arcanotherium.<ref name="court1995"/<ref name= "delmer2009" / Description Numidotherium is one of the earliest representatives of the Proboscidea, and is known from several tooth and skull finds, and also from several postcranial fossils. It reached a shoulder height of 90 to 100 cm and was thus significantly larger than its predecessors Phosphatherium and Eritherium. Furthermore, it was characterized by a short trunk and quite long legs. The skull had a length of 37 cm and a raised cranial roof and had widely spreading zygomatic arches. As one of the earliest proboscideans, Numidotherium had air-filled bones in the roof of the skull, which, due to the increase in size and weight of the animal, offered a larger attachment point for the neck muscles. The rostrum was short and sloped steeply down from the forehead to the nose. The nasal bone was characterized by an elongated outer area of the nasal space (nares), while the intermaxillary bone was rather short and high. The shape of the rostrum created a high, but rather narrow, nasal interior. On the side of the upper jaw, a deep furrow ran from the intermaxillary bone to the anterior approach of the zygomatic arch. In some individuals the temporal ridges on the parietal bone formed a distinctive crest, in others they remained clearly separated. The occiput was also quite short in shape, with a robust occipital bulge. The joint surfaces here for articulating with the cervical spine were comparatively high. The lower jaw, up to 39 cm in length, was low but broad. The symphysis extended to the second premolar. The mental foramen lay below the third premolar tooth. The ascending branch loomed up and delimited a prominent masseteric