3.6 million year old rhino found: Adapted to Ice Age because it was “primitive”?
From “Woolly Rhino Fossil Discovery in Tibet Provides Important Clues to Evolution of Ice Age Giants” (ScienceDaily, Sep. 2, 2011), we learn: A new paper published in the journal Science reveals the discovery of a primitive woolly rhino fossil in the Himalayas, which suggests some giant mammals first evolved in present-day Tibet before the beginning of the Ice Age. The extinction of Ice Age giants such as woolly mammoths and rhinos, giant sloths, and saber-tooth cats has been widely studied, but much less is known about where these giants came from, and how they acquired their adaptations for living in a cold environment. The new rhino is 3.6 million years old (middle Pliocene), much older and more primitive than its Read More ›