WOLLY RHINOCEROS (COELONDONTA ANTIQUITATIS)

WOLLY RHINOCEROS (COELONDONTA ANTIQUITATIS)

The woolly rhinoceros (Coelodonta antiquitatis) is an extinct species of rhinoceros that was common throughout Europe and northern Asia[1] during the Pleistocene epoch and survived the last glacial period. The genus name Coelodonta means "cavity tooth". The woolly rhinoceros was a member of the Pleistocene megafauna. Beginning in the Middle Pleistocene in Asia, the Woolly Rhinoceros, known scientifically as Coelodonta antiquitatis, migrated into Europe and became well-suited to the harsh environment there that existed in our last Ice Age. The animal's massive body and long, shaggy fur allowed it to withstand the severe cold and barren land as it fed on vegetation of the steppe and tundra of Eurasia. The Woolly rhino grew to 11 feet in length and stood 6 feet at its shoulders. It had a huge pair of horns that grew inline on its snout. The front horn grew to lengths in excess of 3 feet. Like modern rhinos, wooly rhinoceros had horns composed of keratin. Unlike the hollow horns of cows, rhino horns are made of fused hair that are solid throughout. The fibers are attached to the snout by skin supported by a raised, roughened area on the skull. An interesting feature of the Woolly rhinoceros' anterior horn is that it was flat from side to side, rather than round like the horn of the modern rhinoceroses. Fossils of the Woolly rhinoceros are often found amidst Woolly mammoth remains. Both Ice Age beasts co-existed in Europe and Asia. Well-preserved Woolly rhinoceros remains have been found frozen in ice and buried in oil-saturated soils. At Staruni in what is now the Ukraine, a complete carcass of a female rhinoceros was found buried in the mud. The combination of oil and salt prevented the remains from decomposing allowing the soft tissues to remain virtually intact. This specimen is currently mounted in the Paleontological Museum in Krakow, Poland.Woolly rhinoceros are clearly shown in cave paintings made by Neanderthals in southern France around 30,000 years ago. Hunting these animals would have been extremely dangerous given the beast's violent temperament and size coupled with its weaponry of its two horns. Like the cave bear, these deadly creatures were revered and were quite a trophy upon a successful hunt.Their eventual extinction is believed to have been caused by their inability to cope with the warming climate that marked the close of the last Ice Age. Today, the family Rhinocerotidae contains only five living species in the wild, two in Africa and three throughout Asia. All but the Sumatran rhinoceros are virtually hairless except for the tip of the tail and a fringe on the ears. The Sumatran rhinoceros is thought to have been stranded on the island of Sumatra during the retreat of the last ice sheet. This amazing animal was covered with a fairly dense coat of hair and is believed to be the closest living relative of the Woolly rhinoceros.Woolly rhino remains have been found in northern regions of Asia (Siberia) and Europe.



Description The external appearance of woolly rhinos is known from mummified individuals from Siberia as well as cave paintings.[2] An adult woolly rhinoceros was typically around 3 to 3.8 metres (10 to 12.5 feet) in length, with an estimated weight of around 2,721–3,175 kg (6,000–7,000 lb).[1] The woolly rhinoceros could grow to be 2 m (6.6 ft) tall;[1] the body size was thus comparable, or slightly larger than, the extant White rhinoceros.[3] Two horns on the skull were made of keratin, the anterior horn being 61 cm (24 in) in length,[4] with a smaller horn between its eyes. It had thick, long fur, small ears, short, thick legs, and a stocky body. Cave paintings suggest a wide dark band between the front and hind legs, but the feature is not universal, and identification of pictured rhinoceroses as woolly rhinoceros is uncertain.As the last and most derived member of the Pleistocene rhinoceros lineage, the woolly rhinoceros was supremely well adapted to its environment. Stocky limbs and thick woolly pelage made it well suited to the steppe-tundra environment prevalent across the Palearctic ecozone during the Pleistocene glaciations. Like the vast majority of rhinoceroses, the body plan of the woolly rhinoceros adhered to a conservative morphology, like the first rhinoceroses seen in the late Eocene. Behavior and habitat The woolly rhinoceros used its horns for defensive purposes and to attract mates. During Greenland Stadial 2 (the Last Glacial Maximum) the North Sea retreated northward, as sea levels were up to 125 metres (410 ft) lower than today. The woolly rhinoceros roamed the exposed Doggerland and much of Northern Europe and was common in the cold, arid desert that is southern England and the North Sea today. Its geographical range expanded and contracted with the alternating cold and warm cycles, forcing populations to migrate as glaciers receded. The woolly rhinoceros co-existed with woolly mammoths and several other extinct larger mammals of the Pleistocene Megafauna. A close relative, the Elasmotherium, had a more southern range.Recently, the oldest known woolly rhinoceros fossil was discovered from 3.6 million years in the Himalayas on the cold Tibetan Plateau, suggesting it existed there during a period of general climate warmth around the earth. It is believed that they migrated from there to northern Asia and Europe when the Ice Age began.

Diet &nbsp Controversy has long surrounded the precise dietary preference of Coelodonta as past investigations have found both grazing and browsing modes of life to be plausible. The palaeodiet of the woolly rhinoceros has been reconstructed using several lines of evidence. Climatic reconstructions indicate the preferred environment to have been cold and arid steppe-tundra, with large herbivores forming an important part of the feedback cycle. Pollen analysis shows a prevalence of grasses and sedges within a more complicated vegetation mosaic.[citation needed] A strain vector biomechanical investigation of the skull, mandible and teeth of a well-preserved last cold stage individual recovered from Whitemoor Haye, Staffordshire, revealed musculature and dental characteristics that support a grazing feeding preference. In particular, the enlargement of the temporalis and neck muscles is consistent with that required to resist the large tugging forces generated when taking large mouthfuls of fodder from the ground. The presence of a large diastema supports this theory.Comparisons with extant perissodactyls confirm that Coelodonta was a hindgut fermentor with a single stomach, and as such would have grazed upon cellulose-rich, protein-poor fodder. This method of digestion would have required a large throughput of food and thus links the large mouthful size to the low nutritive content of the chosen grasses and sedges.[6]

Extinction

Many species of Pleistocene megafauna, like the woolly rhinoceros, became extinct around the same time period. Human and Neanderthal hunting is often cited as one cause.[7] Other theories for the cause of the extinctions are climate change associated with the receding Ice age and the hyperdisease hypothesis (q.v. Quaternary extinction event). Recent radiocarbon dating indicates that populations survived as recently as 8,000 BC in western Siberia. However, the accuracy of this date is uncertain, as several radiocarbon plateaus exist around this time. The extinction does not coincide with the end of the last ice age but does coincide however, with a minor yet severe climatic reversal that lasted for about 1,000–1,250 years, the Younger Dryas (GS1 - Greenland Stadial 1), characterized by glacial readvances and severe cooling globally, a brief interlude in the continuing warming subsequent to the termination of the last major ice age (GS2), thought to have been due to a shutdown of the thermohaline circulation in the ocean due to huge influxes of cold fresh water from the preceding sustained glacial melting during the warmer Interstadial (GI1 - Greenland Interstadial 1 - ca. 16,000 - 11,450 14C years B.P.).

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