What does Coelodonta look like in popular depictions? Artists have most usually shown it looking just like a modern Black or White rhino dressed in a brown furry coat. This is presumably an extreme specialisation for grazing and raises the question as to whether Coelodonta had keratinous pads, or some other, similar structures, in these parts of the jaws. The snout region is also unusual in that incisors are wholly absent in both the upper and lower jaws. As a consequence, it has ‘reverted’ to the possession of enclosed bony nostrils – a condition present in mammal ancestors but not, ordinarily, in mammals themselves. The skull is unusual in having both an extensively ossified nasal septum, and a down-turned anterior region on the premaxilla that contacts the edge of the upper jaw. The form of the Woolly rhino’s skull and teeth are in agreement with this grazing lifestyle: the mouth and lips are broad, and the head dipped downwards towards the ground, even when the animal was in its normal, relaxed posture. However, preserved stomach contents show that Woolly rhinos also ate dwarf willows and birches. Plant fragments stuck in Woolly rhino teeth (most typically inside the infundibula – the crescent-shaped recesses present in the middles of the molars) show that they were grazers, 96% or so of their diet being made up of grasses, with mosses and forbs forming the remainder (Guthrie 1990). antiquitatis and have more slender limb bones (Kahlke & Lacombat 2008). tologoijensis, is known from Transbaikalia, Mongolia and perhaps south-western Siberia. It’s been argued that this name is not available as it’s a nomen nudum (a name lacking a type specimen). Previously, the oldest Coelodonta species was the animal usually called C. thibetana from Tibet is currently the oldest known member of the group. Fossils of other Coelodonta species show that this group originated in the Tibetan region during the Pliocene, their evolution perhaps driven by the uplift of the Qinghai-Tibet Plateau (Deng 2002, Deng et al. Spanish specimens come from dry, temperate habitats dominated by grasses and broadleaved trees. Why it never moved into North America is unknown – it should have.Īs is the case for various ‘Ice Age’ megamammals, the Woolly rhino wasn’t necessarily an inhabitant of freezing cold places with blizzards and thick snow on the ground, or even of tundra-dominated habitats. Originally named in 1807 (but known for some time prior), this cold-adapted, shaggy-coated rhinocerotid rhino occurred from the Atlantic fringes of Europe all the way east to Beringia, and as far south as the southern Caucasus and south-east China. One of the Pleistocene mammals depicted without fail in popular books – encyclopedias of prehistoric life and the like – is the Woolly rhinoceros Coelodonta antiquitatis (the species name is written antiquus in many sources).
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