Palaeoloxodon falconeri is an extinct species of dwarf elephant from the Middle Pleistocene (around 500–200,000 years ago) of Sicily and Malta.

Palaeoloxodon falconeri derives from the 4 metre tall straight-tusked elephant (P. antiquus), which arrived in Europe approximately 800,000 years ago.

P. falconeri's ancestors most likely reached Sicily from the Italian mainland, likely via a series of islands that now form part of the southern Calabrian peninsula.

[6] Palaeoloxodon falconeri is considered to be a textbook example of insular dwarfism, with adult individuals around the size of modern elephant calves, drastically smaller than their mainland ancestors.

[6] This makes P. falconeri the smallest known elephant species, along with the roughly equivalently sized but much more poorly known Palaeoloxodon cypriotes of Cyprus.

Due to the much smaller body size resulting in increased heat loss, it is possible that the species was covered by a more dense coat of hair than present in living elephants in order to maintain a stable body temperature, though if it was present it was still likely sparse, due to elephants lacking sweat glands.

[2] Palaeoloxodon falconeri became extinct on Sicily around 200,000 years ago,[3] due to the tectonic uplift of northeast Sicily and Calabria resulting in a narrowing of the distance between the island and the Italian mainland, similar to the geography in the region today, allowing a number of large mammal species from mainland Italy to colonise the island, including carnivores like cave hyenas, cave lions, grey wolves, brown bears, and red foxes, and herbivores like wild boar, red deer, fallow deer, aurochs, steppe bison and the hippo Hippopotamus pentlandi.