P.T. Barnum always claimed Jumbo courageously gave up his life that night in St. Thomas by attacking an approaching steam train bearing down on a dwarf elephant named Tom Thumb.

Examining Jumbo’s massive skull, paleopathologist and team member, Richard Thomas, discovered the devastating results of Jumbo’s soft diet in captivity: the elephant’s teeth did not wear down.

It was David Attenborough’s idea. He’d always wanted to do a documentary about Jumbo the elephant — the world’s first animal superstar — who died in St. Thomas, Ontario under ...

“Jumbo the Elephant was the highest paid entertainer in the world,” says artistic director Gil Garratt. “He was the biggest deal on any stage in North America in the late eighteen hundreds.” ...

Jumbo was an African elephant who was exhibited in the Paris and London zoos and controversially bought in 1882 by the American circus entrepreneur P.T. Barnum.

Jumbo, a famous elephant that belonged to showman P.T. Barnum, at the London Zoo. (London Stereoscopic Company/Hulton Archive/Getty Images) Perspective by Luke Fannin Americans have long been ...

The name Jumbo came later, after prospectors found copper just east of the mountain’s summit and named their lode for the biggest elephant in Barnum and Bailey’s circus.