Panayides said paleontologists theorize hippos may have swum or floated here during the Pleistocene ice age from land that is now Turkey or Syria. They may have clung to tree trunks and other debris during the crossing. (See map.)
Lower sea levels at the time made Cyprus much larger than its present 3,570 square miles (9,250 square kilometers), so it was much closer to other lands. By some estimates, what is now Syria was a mere 18 miles (29 kilometers) away.
Dwarf Hippo-Human Link
Digs over the last century uncovered smaller numbers of dwarf hippo fossils at 40 locations across Cyprus. One cave found 20 years ago had evidence of fire, stone tools, and scorched bones, indicating dwarf hippos were hunted by humans.
Carbon dating on those hippo fossils showed the site dated to 8,000 B.C. Evidence of human activity at Ayia Napa means the island may have been settled by humans as much as 3,500 years earlier.
A human footprint at the Ayia Napa site could bolster the theory that the island's earliest inhabitants could have driven the dwarf hippos to extinction through hunting, said Panayides.
"If these new bones are found to be older than bones previously discovered and scientists can find an association with humans, then the discovery has the potential to tell us more about the island's first human inhabitants," said Eleanor Weston, a paleontologist at London's Natural History Museum who was not connected with the Ayia Napa discovery.
Panayides said indications that hippo bones at Ayia Napa had been crushed as if trampled by other hippos, suggesting successive generations came to the cave. Shelter is the most likely explanation, but Panayides didn't rule out the possibility the hippos returned to an ancient burial ground to die.
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