The small city of Zada, on the roof of the world in a corner of southwest China, not only leaves traces of the most mysterious Guge Dynasty in Tibetan history, but also buries a mysterious animal, the woolly rhinoceros. This is a behemoth wandering on the ice and snow wasteland during the Ice Age, covered in hair and with huge horns on its nose, leaving a terrifying memory for ancient humans...
The mystery of the origin of the woolly rhinoceros
∨ Written by Deng Tao /Courtesy of Deng Tao, Li Qiang, etc
↑ Restoration of the Tibetan woolly rhinoceros. In the midst of the ice and snow, the Tibetan woolly rhinoceros used the flat horn protruding from its nose to sweep away the snow and struggled to find food. Drawing by Julie Naylor
< h1 class="pgc-h-arrow-right" > natural mummies were found</h1>
Stalini is now a village in the Eastern Carpathian region of Ukraine, and the earliest historical records about it date back to 1476 AD. However, in the history of frequent divisions and reorganizations in Europe, the region of Stalini in the early last century was ruled by Poland. Now Staluni looks ordinary and serene, and there is nothing unique about it. However, in the late 19th and early 20th centuries, it was a lively and bustling place due to massive asphalt mining activities.
In 1907, Stalini suddenly attracted the attention of the scientific community: in a 27-meter-deep asphalt pit, workers found the remains of a mammoth, a woolly rhinoceros, and other animals. Unfortunately, these remains are not too well preserved, and scientists do not have much information. Until World War I, Stalini made no further similar discoveries. The temporary peace between the two world wars allowed the European countries to recuperate, economic activities such as mining flourished, and the bitumen mining in Stalini was revived. An even bigger sensation in 1929 again made an exciting wave in the scientific community: an almost complete woolly rhinoceros remains and two other specimens were found in Stalini. So far, 4 woolly rhinoceros remains have been found. They are still on display in the Natural History Museum in Krakow, Poland.
↑The woolly rhinoceros mummy is an extremely valuable research material. Unlike bones, animal hair, muscles and other tissues are extremely difficult to preserve as fossils, and can only be preserved under very special conditions (such as in natural asphalt lakes). The mummy of the woolly rhinoceros shows us directly the external morphological characteristics of the woolly rhinoceros.
According to isotope determination (one of the dating methods), these woolly rhinos lived 35,000 to 40,000 years ago, but why have they survived so many years and survived so well? This is related to the special environment of the Stalini asphalt mine: sediments made from a mixture of clay, asphalt and brine have leached animals such as the woolly rhinoceros into natural mummies. During the late Pleistocene winter tens of thousands of years ago, snow and ice covered the mud swamps on the tundra, while the freezing point of asphalt and brine was low, so that the melted soft mud remained beneath the frozen cover on the surface. Such soft mud unfortunately became a trap for large animals such as woolly rhinos and mammoths that live here. The morphological characteristics of these ancient animal remains closely match the patterns on prehistoric cave paintings in southern France and other places, indicating that the vivid images are not random graffiti by Neanderthals (an extinct prehistoric human being), but have a very realistic style.
↑ Restoration of the Woolly Rhinoceros in Mud River Bay. Found in Dongxiang Autonomous County, Gansu Province, the fossil of the Woolly Rhinoceros in Nihe Bay is the most primitive Woolly Rhinoceros in Tibet before its discovery, with a geological age of 2.5 million years. (Photo/ Li Rongshan)
Fossil bones of the woolly rhinoceros were scientifically described and named as early as 1799 by the German naturalist Blumenbach, but previously only its image could be inferred until its well-preserved remains were found in Stalini. The woolly rhinoceros has a very thick skeleton, thick fur and huge nose horns, and can reach a maximum of 4.4 meters long and 2 meters tall, and weigh more than 3 tons. Due to the abundance of fossils, as well as the mummy of Stalini and the complete remains later found in the Siberian permafrost, paleontologists not only know a lot about the skeleton and physical anatomy of the woolly rhinoceros, but can even see the long hairs that cover its whole body like a blanket. Rhinoceros horns are also made entirely of hair gelatin, so after the animal dies, the horns cannot be preserved as fossils because of decay. With the exception of the horn of the woolly rhinoceros, it has been fortunately preserved in the Tar lake of Staluny and the Siberian tundra, making this extinct rhino one of the most famous glacial animals.
↑ The Indian rhinoceros, now found in India and Nepal, is a critically endangered species. It is closest to the phylogenetic relationship between the Javan rhinoceros and the woolly rhinoceros.
Ice age animals have long been thought to be closely associated with global cooling events in the Pleistocene. They show adaptation to cold environments, such as large size, long hair, and a body structure that can blow snow, mammoth and woolly rhinoceros are the most typical representatives. These intriguing extinct animals have received widespread attention, and they were once hypothesized to have evolved with the expansion of the Quaternary ice sheet, i.e., were presumed to originate in the high-latitude Arctic Circle, but there has been no credible evidence.
In 1930, the French paleontologist De Rijin found a mastodontis with special folds on the outer wall of the woolly rhinoceros in Nihe Bay, Yangyuan County, Hebei Province, so he classified the specimen as the woolly rhinoceros. It clearly shows some of the original traits and is also smaller in size than the ordinary woolly rhinoceros, but because there is too little material, no new species were established at that time. However, this discovery suggests that the woolly rhinoceros may have originated in Asia, pointing a direction in the search for its ancestors.
< h1 class= "pgc-h-arrow-right" > search for the ancestors of the woolly rhinoceros</h1>
By 1969, although no more material had been found, the German paleontologist Kalk had created a new species, the Nihewan woolly rhinoceros, based on this specimen from Nihewan, and based on a small amount of material, it was believed that there were also fossils of nihewan woolly rhinoceros in Gonghe County, Qinghai Province, and Linyi County, Shanxi Province. However, because the material of the woolly rhinoceros in Nihe Bay is too scattered, there are still many unsolved mysteries about its origins in North China.
↑Schematic diagram of the origin, migration and distribution of the woolly rhinoceros. The (1), (2), (3) and (4) of the figure show the discovery sites and distribution ranges of the woolly rhinoceros in different geological epochs, respectively. (Drawing/Deng Tao, etc.)
Important progress was made in 2002, when a complete rhinoceros skull and mandible were found in Dongxiang County, Gansu Province. The fossils come from the earliest loess sediments of the Quaternary Period, with a geological age of 2.5 million years. Although the woolly rhinoceros found in Dongxiang, Gansu and Yangyuan, Hebei province is the same species, the geological age of the former is earlier, so it is the earliest known fossil of the woolly rhinoceros in the world at that time. The new discoveries are important for understanding the early evolution of the woolly rhinoceros, and their characteristics suggest that the woolly rhino should have parted ways with other rhinos at least in the Pliocene. Dongxiang's material shows that the nasal bone of the Woolly Rhinoceros in NiheWan is very strong, with a large and rough dome-like horn that occupies almost the entire back of the nasal bone, and a small central horn on the frontal bone. Unlike the loess in eastern China, the development of the Paleo soil layer in the Early Pleistocene Loess in Dongxiang is very sparse and weak, indicating that its climatic conditions are more severe. The deposition of the Loess is the product of strong winter winds, influenced by the emergence of the Great Ice Age and the uplift of the Tibetan Plateau, when the climate was dry and cold. The fossil woolly rhinoceros in Dongxiang appeared at the beginning of the Quaternary Period, which was the period when the polar ice sheet grew rapidly and the global climate changed dramatically. Changes in global ice mass greatly affect loess sedimentation through land drought and winter wind intensity. Therefore, the woolly rhinoceros in Dongxiang is a prominent sign of the beginning of the Quaternary ice age.
↑ Late Pleistocene rhinoceros restoration. During the glaciation of the Late Pleistocene, the woolly rhinoceros was widely distributed in northern Eurasia. The very developed long hairs are a guarantee of their survival during the harsh ice age. Drawing / Michael Long
The discovery of Dongxiang proves that the woolly rhinoceros did exist in northern China in the Early Pleistocene, and then migrated north to west, reaching Siberia and Europe in the Middle Pleistocene. In the Late Pleistocene, the woolly rhinoceros had a wider range than any known living and extinct rhinoceros, spreading throughout northern Eurasia, from the Korean Peninsula in the east to Scotland in the west. For reasons that are not yet understood, the woolly rhinoceros did not cross the Bering Land Bridge. Its companions, such as mammoths, bison, saiga antelopes, and humans, eventually reached North America. The woolly rhinoceros has a broad front lip and flattened nose horns that can be used to scrape snow in search of hay. Its tooth crown is quite high, it is a typical herbivore, and is therefore very adapted to dry and cold grassland environments. All of the found specimens of the horns of the rhinoceros have transverse stripes, which represent annual growth bands (concentric textures like annual rings), indicating strong seasonal variations in the areas where the rhinoceros lives. Due to its special fur that can withstand the cold of the Arctic Circle, it plays an important role in paleoclimatology, and the late Pleistocene mammal combination in northern Eurasia is also known as the mammoth-woolly rhinoceros fauna. The Mud River Bay Rhinoceros has a broad horned pedestal, and its strongly ossified nasal septum (most mammals have nostrils separated by cartilage in the middle, but rhinos have become hard bones to support the large horns) also to support the huge horns. These features show that the Pleistocene woolly rhinoceros lived in the harsh climate of the Ice Age like its descendants. But where did the woolly rhinoceros live before the ice age begins?
<h1 class="pgc-h-arrow-right" > it from the Qinghai-Tibet Plateau</h1>
A major breakthrough was published in the September 2, 2011 issue of the journal Science: An international collaborative team led by the Institute of Vertebrate Paleontology and Paleoanthropology of the Chinese Academy of Sciences discovered a combination of Pliocene mammal fossils containing the most primitive phinotys known in the Zada Basin in the western Himalayas of Tibet. It was named a new species, the Tibetan woolly rhinoceros.
↑ The Tibetan Zada Tulin was formed in the Pliocene, which is the result of weathering and erosion of river and lake facies sediments, which buries animal fossils such as Tibetan woolly rhinoceros, Zada three-toed horse, snow leopard, rock sheep, and Ku sheep. This was a training camp for Quaternary glacial fauna in the Pliocene and is of great research value. (Photo / Li Qiang)
New fossil material from Tibet proves that some members of the glacial fauna evolved on the Tibetan Plateau before the Quaternary Period. The high-altitude Tibetan Plateau, which is cold in winter, became a "training ground" for glacial animals, allowing them to form a pre-adaptation to the glacial climate, and has since successfully expanded into the dry and cold grasslands of northern Eurasia. The new discovery overturns the hypothesis that glacial animals originated in the Arctic Circle, proving that the Tibetan Plateau was the center of their original evolution.
Located in the Xiangquan River basin in the western part of the Tibet Autonomous Region, Zada is located at an altitude of 3700 to 4500 meters, and is administratively under the jurisdiction of Ali Region. When people think of Zada, they often think of the ruins of the Gurg Dynasty, which depict the rise and fall of this kingdom that lasted for 700 years. Another that is talked about is the Zada Tulin, which is formed on the basis of the late Cenozoic river and lacustral sediments, which are named zada formations in stratigraphy. It chronicles the uplift of the Tibetan Plateau over the last few million years, where the most primitive fossils of the woolly rhinoceros were found.
↑In August 2007, members of the Sino-US joint expedition carefully cleaned the surface of the Tibetan woolly rhinoceros fossil in Zada, Tibet, and then sealed it into a plaster "Pilauk" (Russian transliteration, meaning a plaster bag to protect the fossils). (Photo / Li Qiang)
Fossil material of the Tibetan woolly rhinoceros found in the Zada Basin includes the skull, mandible and cervical vertebrae of the same adult individual, located 10 kilometers northeast of the county seat of Zada. The Tibetan woolly rhinoceros lived about 3.7 million years ago, and it is in the most basic position of the phinoty rhinoceros lineage in terms of phylogeny, and is the earliest known record of the woolly rhinoceros. As the ice age began to manifest 2.8 million years ago, the Tibetan woolly rhinoceros left the plateau, passed through some intermediate stages, and finally came to the low altitude and high latitudes of northern Eurasia, where it became an important member of the mammoth-woolly rhinoceros fauna that flourished in the Middle and Late Pleistocene, along with yaks, pan sheep and rock sheep.
On the skull of the Tibetan woolly rhinoceros, the rough surface occupies the entire back of the nasal bone, thus indicating that it has a huge nose horn when it is alive, and a wide and low bulge on the frontal bone shows that it also has a smaller frontal horn. The size of its nose horns is larger and narrower in form than that of most living and extinct rhinos.
↑ Photo of the back of a Tibetan woolly rhinoceros skull (Figure 1).
↑ Side photo of the Tibetan woolly rhinoceros skull and mandible (Figures 2, 3). The Tibetan woolly rhinoceros has a series of typical characteristics of the woolly rhinoceros: the head shape is slender so that it can eat food on the ground; the nasal septum is ossified, the nasal corner corner is wide and flattened to support the huge nose horn; the occipital crest is raised and extended, which facilitates the flexible movement of the head.
↑ Photograph of the upper teeth of the Tibetan woolly rhinoceros on the crown (Figure 4). Photograph of the lower teeth of the Tibetan woolly rhinoceros in the canopy (Figure 5). (Photo by Deng Tao)
There are now five species of rhinos in the world, three of which are found in Asia, namely the double-horned Sumen rhinoceros and two one-horned rhinos (Indian rhinos and Javan rhinos); the other two are distributed in Africa, namely the double-horned black rhino and the white rhinoceros. The Sumen rhinoceros is a relative of both the two living unicorns and the Phi rhinoceros branch, or the two Cloister rhinoceros are first related to the Phi Phi Rhino branch, and the Sumen Rhinoceros is a relative of this larger branch.
The last representative of the woolly rhinoceros disappeared at the end of the Pleistocene 10,000 years ago. This is often thought to be the result of a warm climate after the end of the ice age, but primitive human hunting is also a contributing factor. The extinction of large animals such as woolly rhinos and mammoths coincided with a period of increased human populations and improved hunting techniques, which underpinned the latter view. The use of powerful stone axes and sharp stone spears, and possibly even the invention of fire attack methods, greatly increased the hunting success rate of primitive humans, while the blows to animals such as the woolly rhinoceros were fatal. Humans have lived with woolly rhinos for a long time, and although their large size, strong strength, terrifying horns, and perhaps grumpy temper have frightened humans, large animals such as hunting are an important food source, and their thick long hair is also the best clothing material for humans to withstand the cold. Humans use "advanced" weapons in their hands and use "coordinated combat" methods to hunt slow-moving animals such as woolly rhinoceros. The result of the hunt led to a sharp decline in their populations and eventually to an irreparable path to extinction.
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This article is an excerpt from the September 2012 issue of Civilization
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