Much of the island of Crete is Miocene and filled with fossil mollusks, bivalves, gastropods who lived 5 to 23 million years ago in warm, tropical seas. Aside from marine deposits, the island boasts some of the best vertebrate finds, including the remains of Deinotherium giganteum, a massive 8 million-year-old mammal and primative relative of the elephants roaming the Earth today. With an enormous large nasal opening at the centre of his skull, presumably to house a rather largish trunk, Deinotherium may be the inspiration behind the myth of the Cyclops, the one-eyed giant from Homer's famous Odyssey. - Fossil Huntress

The ancestors of the dwarf elephants that once inhabited Crete, and Malta too, presumably, migrated from Africa, when the Strait of Gibraltar closed up, drying up much of the Mediterranean. - Fossil Huntress