On September 22, it's the annual World Rhino Day, and today, the ancient species of rhino is in danger of extinction.
Picture from Google
But in history, their numbers have also flourished, and there have been many different types of shapes, many of which are strange-looking.
"The prototype of the horned poisonous beast"
If you've seen the movie Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them, you'll be impressed by the horned beast that resembles a rhinoceros and can spray venom from the huge horns of its head.
Figure from the network
In the evolutionary history of nature, there has really been an animal that looks incomparably close to the horned poisonous beast, called the plate-toothed rhinoceros.
The plate-toothed rhinoceros lives in the Eurasian steppe of the Pleistocene about 2.6 million to 30,000 years ago, and is a species of the plate-toothed rhinoceros of the family Euphroceros in the family Rhinoceros, with a total of five populations: siberian plate-toothed rhinoceros, Caucasian plate-toothed rhinoceros, and Chinese plate-toothed rhinoceros.
With an average height of between 2.5 and 3 meters, a body length of nearly 5 meters, and a weight of 5 to 7 tons, it is comparable in size to an African elephant, and is second only in size to the largest terrestrial mammal ever seen in the entire rhinoceros family.
Image courtesy of Wikipedia
In addition to its huge size, the most obvious external feature of the plate-toothed rhinoceros is the huge horn located on the forehead, up to 2 meters long between the eyes, which is the longest in the entire rhino family, and the internal structure is the same as the horn of the modern rhinoceros, which is similar to the human hair or nails.
In addition to the length, the horns of the plate-toothed rhinoceros are also unusually large, and the thickest horn base (the root of the horn) covers almost the entire forehead, which is very strong.
With a powerful body and long, strong horns, the real-life plate-toothed rhinoceros does not have the ability to spray venom, but it can still make all kinds of predators prohibitive in adulthood.
In addition, the plate-toothed rhinoceros is the only one-horned rhinoceros found with horns growing on the forehead, and the existing one-horned rhino horns are on the front of the nose.
Another important feature of the plate-toothed rhinoceros is their teeth. Fossil data show that the teeth of the plate-toothed rhinoceros are long columnar square plates (which is why it got its name) and look very similar to the teeth of horses.
As a result, they, like horses, feed on grasses on the ground, which makes them ideal for living in the vast Eurasian steppes of the Pleistocene.
By the late Pleistocene, with the end of the Ice Age, the mighty plate-toothed rhinoceros finally lost control of the changes in the environment and eventually disappeared forever.
"Wear a sweater" of furry rhinoceros
If you ask about the environment or region in which rhinos live, many people think of the vast African grasslands, or the jungles of India and Southeast Asia, which all have a common characteristic of "heat".
But in the Pleistocene hundreds to 10,000 years ago, there was a class of rhinos that once made their home in the snowy Siberia, and people gave them an image name based on the thick long hairs on their bodies - the woolly rhinoceros.
In the classification within the rhinoceros family , the woolly rhinoceros belongs to the coherent rhinoceros of the subfamily Diplodocus , a close relative of the extant Sumatran rhinoceros.
Adult woolly rhinos are 2 meters tall, 4 meters long, and weigh about 4 tons; they have a longer nose horn and a shorter forehead horn; in addition to wearing a thick sweater, the teeth of the woolly rhinoceros are also very distinctive, and the huge mouth does not have a single front tooth, so they have another name in academia , "cavity tooth rhinoceros" (meaning rhinoceros with hollow teeth).
When eating, the woolly rhinoceros first holds the grass or leaves in its large mouth, and then chews it deep in the mouth and chews it with its cheek teeth with many folds.
The earliest woolly rhinoceros appeared in northern Asia about 2 million years ago, when the woolly rhinoceros has not yet grown a great shape, the hair on the body is not very much, so it mainly lives in places that are not too cold, and the more famous species are the Nihe Bay woolly rhinoceros in Hebei, China.
In the hundreds of thousands of years that followed, the woolly rhinoceros began to migrate north into Europe, and by the Middle and Late Pleistocene, they had occupied all of Europe except Italy, southern Greece, and Scandinavia, one of which conquered the icy Siberia, evolved into a cold-tolerant ice age behemoth like a long-haired mammoth, and survived until the end of the Pleistocene.
Amphibian rhinoceros resembling hippopotamus
If the most significant difference between today's rhinoceros and hippopotamus is undoubtedly the former with long horns on its head, and the latter with hornless horns on its head but with fangs longer than carnivores.
However, in the history of the rhinoceros family, there was once a type of "non-mainstream", they have a flat head, but the mouth has a hippo-like fangs, such non-mainstream representatives are the "amphibian rhinoceros" family.
Amphibian rhinoceros is a completely extinct group of early rhinos, living in Asia, Europe and North America from the middle Eocene to the early Oligocene, most members of this family are more than 3 meters long, the largest of which is 4 meters 4 tons, they have hornless heads, short and thick limbs, and developed molars and canine teeth grow and sharp fangs that can be used to defend themselves against predators or compete with their companions for mates and territory.
In addition to its size and teeth, the habits of amphibian rhinos are also very similar to those of modern hippos, preferring to make their home in the river near the shore, and when hungry, they will come to the shore to eat fresh plant branches and leaves. This habit of sometimes running to the shore in the water and sometimes running to the shore is indeed worthy of the name of "amphibious".
Among all the amphibian rhinos, the Kadi rhinoceros and the Mongolian amphibian rhinoceros are relatively special groups, the former of which has a forward protruding nose similar to that of modern tapirs, and the head of the latter occupies 1/4 of the length of the torso, and the proportion of the body is significantly larger than that of other amphibian rhinos.
With their sharp fangs and stout stature, amphibian rhinos lived very moistly in the warm Eocene and Oligocene, but by the end of the Oligocene, their highly specialized bodies could not adapt to changes in the environment, and eventually withdrew from the stage of natural evolutionary history.
The Giant of the Land Mammals
The above types of rhinos, although not the same in appearance, but in general, they are still short necks and legs, huge body forms, from the silhouette can be more or less associated with modern rhinos, but the following to introduce the giant rhinoceros, the appearance and modern rhinoceros can be completely incompatible with the wind horse cow.
In fact, the giant rhino does not refer specifically to a certain kind of rhinoceros, but refers to all animals in the family Macrosnacillidae of the family Rhinoceros, which are generally hornless on the head, long neck and long legs, which is in stark contrast to the rhino in people's impressions.
Giant rhinos mainly lived about 340,000 to 230,000 years ago, in the Oligocene of Asia and Eastern Europe, most of their members are at least 4 meters tall, between 7-8 meters in length, weighing more than 10 tons, of which the largest Jungar giant rhino is more than 5 meters shoulder height, more than 9 meters long, and weighs between 15 and 20 tons, which is the largest terrestrial mammal ever found in the history of the earth.
The excellent altitude allows giant rhinos to eat leaves that other herbivores can't reach, even if the food in one place is eaten, the long and powerful legs are enough to ensure that they can make a long-distance migration and find the next piece of woodland with enough food, and the huge body plate makes them ignore the existence of any carnivore.
However, just as the so-called prosperity must decline, shortly after the successful evolution of such a superb species as the Jungar giant rhinoceros in the giant rhino family, the heavens made a cruel joke with them, with the drying of the global climate at the end of the Oligocene, large areas of forest were replaced by grasslands, and the low crown teeth of the giant rhinoceros in order to eat leaves could not chew rough grass, and finally eliminated before the advent of the Miocene.
Prehistoric ponies "running rhinoceros"
Although the giant rhino is significantly different from other rhinos in terms of physical form, it is similar to them in the way of dealing with predators, relying on its large size to deter each other.
However, another rhinoceros that is close to the giant rhinoceros, "running rhinoceros", does not have this ability, because they are smaller than humans.
Rhinoceros is a rhinoceros family of animals, the earliest appeared in the Eocene North American continent, they are 1 meter long, no more than 80 cm above sea level, no horns on the head, the figure looks like a small horse, usually in small groups as a unit to live in the depths of the dense forest, mainly to feed on the branches and leaves of plants, occasionally to the open woodland, because of their small size, they can only face predators when they can only run thirty-six as the best policy.
As an early member of the rhino family, in addition to the obvious difference in posture from later rhinos, the number of toes is also different, they have 4 toes on the front foot and 3 on the back foot (modern rhinos are 3 before and after).
The fossil record shows that rhinos, although small, have eye sockets that are larger than their heads, and paleontologists speculate that they should have good eyesight to allow for the detection of hidden predators at any time.
In the Oligocene, the rhinoceros began to flourish, and their sphere of influence expanded from North America to Eurasia, and the more famous species were the proto-hoofed rhinoceros living in Yunnan, China, which was about the size of a dog.
The vast majority of rhinos have low crown teeth suitable for eating leaves, with the exception of the Nebraska rhinoceros, which lives in North America, where the higher crown allows them to feed on rough grass on the ground. It is also with these teeth that the Nebraska Running Rhinoceros becomes the longest-lived member of the Running Rhino family.
However, the Nebraska Rhino was not able to escape extinction at the earliest. By the early Miocene, great changes in climate and competition from animals such as three-toed horses were the first to drive the rhinoceros family off the train of natural evolutionary history.
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