[Archelaos]

Why should the army leave a dead elephant on the road? They would butcher it themselves and take the meat with them (and the tusks). The locals may have found some large bones for their living room decorations (and may be some skin, if they were lucky).

[lukan]

Because they might be in a hurry to reach that mountain pass before the snow comes. Or to meet other goals set by the general and if already stocked up on supplies, it would be quite a burden to also carry an extra elephant (which was likely also carrying things before it died).

[Archelaos]

Quite unlikely. For an army on the move, especially one that had to cover such a long distance, a considerable portion of the troops was assigned to procure provisions anyway.

Bret C. Devereaux has written a series of three blog posts on the topic of pre-modern army logistics that explains that in detail. See: https://acoup.blog/2022/07/15/collections-logistics-how-did-...

[lukan]

Anything in particular in there, that says rather wait for a mountain pass to become unpassable, than leave some meat behind?

(I don't claim this is what happened, I claim a army sometimes has other needs and might have already all the food it can carry)

[hinkley]

This is the first bone they’ve identified. That means no other bones were identified in the last 2200 years.