Numidotherium is an extinct genus of early proboscidean discovered in 1984, that lived during the middle Eocene

Eocene

The Eocene Epoch, lasting from about 56 to 34 million years ago , is a major division of the geologic timescale and the second epoch of the Paleogene Period in the Cenozoic Era. The Eocene spans the time from the end of the Palaeocene Epoch to the beginning of the Oligocene Epoch. The start of the...

 some 46 million years ago of North Africa, weight 200 kilograms.

The type species, N. koholense is known from an almost complete skeleton from the site of El Kohol, southern Algeria

Algeria

Algeria , officially the People's Democratic Republic of Algeria , also formally referred to as the Democratic and Popular Republic of Algeria, is a country in the Maghreb region of Northwest Africa with Algiers as its capital.In terms of land area, it is the largest country in Africa and the Arab...

 dating from the early/middle Eocene period. The animal had the size and the appearance of a modern tapir

Tapir

A Tapir is a large browsing mammal, similar in shape to a pig, with a short, prehensile snout. Tapirs inhabit jungle and forest regions of South America, Central America, and Southeast Asia. There are four species of Tapirs: the Brazilian Tapir, the Malayan Tapir, Baird's Tapir and the Mountain...

. Its appearance were more slender and more plantigrade than the elephants', its closest modern relative.

A new species, N. savagei has been discovered in 1995 in late Eocene deposits of Dor el Talha, Libya

Libya

Libya is an African country in the Maghreb region of North Africa bordered by the Mediterranean Sea to the north, Egypt to the east, Sudan to the southeast, Chad and Niger to the south, and Algeria and Tunisia to the west....

, together with another primitive proboscidean, Barytherium grave

Barytherium

Barytherium is a genus of an extinct family of primitive proboscidean that lived during the late Eocene and early Oligocene in North Africa...

. N. savagei may be a synonym of N. koholense.