Woolly Rhinos

I don't have the warm feeling for woolly rhinoceroses that I've got for woolly mammoths, but I do have some curiosity about a species that would go to that much trouble to survive in such an inhabitable environment. Why didn't they just move south to a milder climate? I suppose they weren't migratory to begin with, so they wouldn't have had any idea that the climate was different anywhere else.

Woolly rhinos are now extinct, but they were common throughout Europe and Asia during the last glacial period. No remains of them have been found in North America, so it would seem they did not travel across the Bering Strait Land Bridge.

There were 2 sub-species of woolly rhinos, both covered with long, thick hair in order to survive the extremely harsh, cold mammoth steppe. They had large humps reaching up from the shoulders, and fed mainly on grasses and sedges, which are flowering grass-like plants. It had a wide upper lip that allowed it to pluck vegetation directly from the ground. It also ate woody plants such as alders, conifers and willows.

The remains of woolly rhinos had been known for a long time before the species was described. Often, they were attributed to some mythical creatures. Some believed their horns were the claws of a giant bird. One skull was assumed to be that of a dragon.

The oldest known woolly rhinoceros fossil was 3.6 million years old, discovered on the Tibetan Plateau in 2011. A study of DNA samples indicate that the closest living relative of woolly rhinos is the Sumatran rhinoceros.

An adult woolly rhino could measure up to 11.8 ft (3.6 metres) from head to tail, could have stood 5.2 ft (1.6 metres) tall at the shoulder, and weighed as much as 2 tons. Both males and females had 2 horns, a long one of 4.4 ft (1.35 metres) near the end of the nose, and a shorter one of 1.56 ft (47.5 centimetres) between the eyes. These horn measurements are for fully grown specimens. The woolly rhino had a longer head and body and shorter legs than other rhinos. Its shoulder hump was used to support the animal's massive front horn, but it also held fat to aid survival through the desolate winters when food was scarce. It is believed that woolly rhinos could reach the age of 40.

Based on frozen specimens, the rhino's fur coat was reddish-brown, with a thick undercoat under a layer of long, coarse hair. The tail was no longer than 20 inches (50 centimetre). Females had 2 nipples on her udder, indicating they probably gave birth to one calf at a time, although there might occasionally be two. Births would have occurred every 2 to 3 years.

Not only were their tail relatively shorter than those of hot climate rhinos, so were their ears, reaching no longer than 9.5 inches (24 cm) compared to the 12 inches (30 cm) of other rhinos. Woolly rhinos also had thick skin, ranging up to 5/8 inch (15 mm) on the chest and shoulders.

The woolly rhino skull's length gave the head a deeply downward-facing slant. Strong muscles in its neck held the massive skull in place. Like other rhinos, they did not have incisors, only premolars and molars, with which they ground up the vegetation they ate.

Adults had few predators, because of their massive horns and size, but young individuals could be attacked by hyenas, cave lions and other such animals. One skull indicated an attack from a feline, but that individual survived to adulthood.

Woolly rhinos probably used their horns for moving snow to uncover vegetation during winter, as well as for combat. Some cave paintings depict 2 woolly rhinos fighting each other.

The woolly rhinoceros lived mainly in dry to arid climates in lowlands, plateaus and river valleys, with migrations to higher elevations in favorable climate phases. It could not easily cross heavy snow and steep terrain of mountain ranges, so it avoided them. Other large herbivores, such as the woolly mammoth, giant deer, reindeer, saiga antelope and bison, lived alongside it.

By 130,000 years ago, woolly rhinos lived throughout most of Europe, the Russian Plain, Siberia and the Mongolian Plateau, which gave it the widest range of any rhinoceros species.

Humans shared that habitat, but evidence that they interacted is rare. However, many cave paintings do depict woolly rhinoceroses. About 20 such drawings of woolly rhinos are dated at over 31,000 years old.

It is postulated that the woolly rhinoceros went extinct because of the changing climate as the ice age neared its end. There are indications that some population survived until about 10,000 BC in western Siberia. Many rhino remains have been found in the permafrost region. The known history of these discoveries starts in 1771.

All in all, I don't want to meet one of these critters in a cold, dark alley. Or anywhere else, come to think of it. I assume they couldn't see any better than their present-day brethren, but they probably made up for it by attacking anything that moved, whether they knew what it was or not.

 

 

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Woolly_rhinoceros