The first recorded finds were by Dorothea Bate in 1902[1] from the cave deposit of Páno Díkomo-Imbohary[2] in the southern part of the Pentadáktylos/Kyrenia mountain range that runs across northern Cyprus.

[2] Both species are considered to have ultimately descended from the very large straight-tusked elephant (Palaeoloxodon antiquus) of mainland Europe and Western Asia.

[5] P. xylophagou is around 3.5 times larger than P. cypriotes, but still strongly dwarfed, only around 7% the size of its mainland ancestor,[6] and has a skull that is heavily modified from that of P. antiquus, being relatively wide, long and low, and lacking the forehead crest found in P.

Fossils of the elephant indicate that it inhabited a wide range of elevations, including the Troodos foothills, with one find around 300 metres (980 ft) up the slopes of Mount Olympus, the highest mountain on the island.

[8] The vegetation may have been similar to present conditions, with a mixture of forest (which today is primarily confined to mountain slopes), and open areas including grassland.

[8][11] The youngest well-dated remains of the species are known from Aetókremnos in southern Cyprus, which has been radiocarbon dated to around 11,504–12,096 years Before Present, close to the Pleistocene-Holocene boundary.

The population would likely have been sensitive to hunting due to their slow life cycles, with the authors calculating that rates of over 200 individuals being killed per year put the species at risk of extinction, with extinction becoming essentially inevitable at over 350 hunted per year (realistically accomplishable with a human population of only a few thousand people probably present on Cyprus during this period).