Woolly Rhino & Ancient Rhino Fossils
This page is devoted to the Woolly Rhinoceros and ancient Rhinoceros like species. It lived alongside the Mammoth and other Ice animals and was as majestic as todays Rhinos. We know what they looked like, because many ancient cave paintings by man who been found that show all these creatures, and along with the mammoth, the rhino also had a woolly coat too. Ice Age mammal remains are quite common to find in the North Sea, but some of them extremely Rare, such as Hippo and Big Cat (Feline) material. As such, these creatures were also part of the same environment as the Mammoths and no doubt the problems that caused the extinction processes had a drastic effect on many species at that time.
Hyracodon nebraskensis teeth and jaw sections from 30 Million Years old, Pennington Co. and Custer Co, South Dakota. USA.
The teeth below come from an Early Rhino, called Hyracodon nebraskensis. It was a lightly built, pony-like mammal of about 1.5 m (5 ft) long. Hyracodon's dentition resembled that of later rhinoceroses, but it was a much smaller animal and differed very little in appearance from the primitive horses of which it was a contemporary. Like the primitive horses, hyracodonts inhabited open forests and wooded steppes and turned from browsing foliage to grazing grass. They died out without leaving any descendants and they mark the end of the phylogenetic branch of hornless, running rhinoceroses.
