Fossils of the biggest land mammal found on earth, know the details
According to a study published Thursday, the fossils of two giant rhinos from about 22 million years ago are unearthed in China. The fossils are among the last relics of the giant beast, discovered with a great roar at the beginning of the giant Rhinos.
Giant rhinos were often over 6 feet tall at the shoulder and weighed over 20 tons, which makes them larger than whales on land and the largest land mammal of all time. In May 2015, new fossils were found in the Linxia region of northwest China's Gansu Province.
One fossil was made up of a skull, jaw, and teeth, and the atlas vertebra, where the head connects to the spine, while the other was made up of three vertebrae. Scientists have reconstructed ancient animals from these remains.
According to a study published in the journal Communications Biology, they found enough differences in their skeletons to classify them as a new species. They named it Paraceratherium linxiaense - the first name is of their larger group of giant rhinos, and the second of the region where it was found.
A newly discovered collection of fossils comes from prehistoric giant rhinos, the largest known as largest land mammal ever in geological history. Paleontologists discovered the entire skull of one rhinoceros and three vertebrae of another in the Linxia Basin in northwest China's Gansu Province.
 |
| Representative image| Credit: Pexel |
Deng Tao, the leader of the team who discovered the fossil, said: "Usually these types of the largest land animal's fossils have parts, but this is a complete skull and jaw, which is very rare."
Tao Deng, the director of the Vertebrate Paleontology and Paleoanthropology Institute at the Chinese Academy of Sciences in Beijing, said that the Linxia region has been famous for fossils since the 1950s when local farmers first found "bone dragons".
Deng's team has searched Linxia for fossils since the 1980s and discovered several complete skeletons of ancient mammals, said Toe Dang, as reported by the sources. However, they had only found fragments of giant rhinoceros fossils, although more complete fossils have been found.
The new giant rhino species is not the largest: Deng said it is slightly smaller than Dzungariotherium orgosense, which is a species discovered from fossils in China in the 1970s.
However, it was about five times larger than the relatively common one, and the earliest remains were identified in present-day Pakistan in the early 1900s. But, none of the giant rhinos had horns on their noses, despite being the ancestors of modern rhinos. The horns that give them their name are a much later adaptation.
Giant rhinos became world-famous in the 1920s after an expedition of Mongolia and China by celebrated American explorer Roy Chapman Andrews, the role model for several of Hollywood's early heroes.
Andrews' team found giant rhinoceros fossils in the largely unexplored Gobi Desert and brought back a fossilized skull. The discovery was so successful that the giant rhinos, according to historian Chris Manias of King's College in London, briefly eclipsed even the largest dinosaurs in public imaginations.
Donald Prothero, a paleontologist at the Los Angeles County Museum of Natural History and author of a book on giant rhinos, said the giant animal was one of the largest mammals ever to walk the earth.
The new species descended from these early migrants, suggests that the giant rhinos began their journey back north in the late Oligocene. According to Deng and his colleagues, to get to Linxia they would have had to cross the Tibetan plateau, which means that the plateau must have been much lower than it is today.
"The weather got wet, and they went back north," said Deng. “Therefore, this discovery is of great importance for the investigation of the entire process of ascertaining the plateau, the climate, and the environment.
