The woolly rhinoceros
A cold-adapted rhino with a flattened horn for sweeping snow spreads across northern Eurasia.
- When
- —
- Duration
- 331 thousand years
- Known to
- ± 40 thousand years
- Era
- Middle Pleistocene, Quaternary
Coelodonta antiquitatis reaches Europe around 460,000 to 400,000 years ago from an ancestral stock that had already adapted to cold on the Tibetan Plateau. It carries a thick coat, a hump of muscle and fat, and a large flattened front horn whose wear patterns indicate it was used to sweep snow from vegetation. It grazes the mammoth steppe alongside mammoth, horse and bison, and is a frequent subject in later cave art.