Fossils present in northwest China’s Gansu province point out a new species of giant rhino that lived greater than 26 million years in the past, based on a paper printed within the journal Communications Biology on Thursday.
The fossils together with a cranium and two vertebrae discovered within the reddish-brown sandstone of the Linxia basin make clear how the traditional rhinos, some of the biggest land mammals ever, developed and moved throughout what’s now Asia.
The dispersal of giant rhino fossils — others have been discovered on the far facet of the Himalayas in Pakistan — point out “Tibet, as a plateau, did not yet exist and was not yet a barrier to exchange of largest land mammals,” the paper stated.
Giant rhinos just like the newly found species, named Paraceratherium linxiaense, had been hornless, long-necked herbivores, maybe weighing 20 tonnes – equal to a number of elephants – and sure residing in open woodland.
