One of the main and still controversial question of modern cosmology
is how and when galaxies form and in particular massive early-type
galaxies and spheroids.
There is growing evidence in near-IR surveys that luminous and 
rather massive old galaxies may have been quite common already at
z~1 and up to z~2. Recent results show indeed that at least up to 
z~1 early-type massive galaxies were already in place and should have 
formed their stars and assembled their mass at relatively higher 
redshift and they still dominate the near-IR luminosity function
and stellar mass density of the universe.
Here I present recent results on early-type high-z ellipticals (EROS and
early type galaxies at z~2) from K20 survey and on the cosmic evolution 
of the Galaxy Stellar Mass Function (MF) to z~2 based on various 
spectroscopic surveys, such as K20 and VVDS.
The predictions from hierarchical models range from severe
underestimates to slight overestimates of the observed mass density at z<2.