Discovered a giant rhinoceros, larger than any land mammal, that inhabited Asia

There was a time when huge creatures lived on Earth, so huge that they would make the largest animals of today flee in terror. Among them were the giant rhinos, a family of mammals that became extinct more than 16 million years ago and that inhabited much of Asia, reaching as far as Eastern Europe. Now, the discovery of a new species of giant rhinoceros clarifies many doubts about the evolution of this family of monumental animals, which inspired the creators of the

saga

to design the titanic four-legged armored vehicles with which the Empire he punished the rebels.

The new discovered animal, taller than a giraffe and feeding on the treetops, has been baptized as

, since the skull and jaw studied were found in the Linxia basin (in central China ), according to the study published in

. The fossils that have been found so far of this group of huge mammals (

) indicate that he lived mainly in areas of what are now China, Mongolia, Pakistan and Kazakhstan.

And thanks to this new member of the family, it is possible to better understand the evolution and distribution process of the six different types of giant rhinoceros throughout Asia during the Oligocene, some thirty million years ago, when other colossal animals such as the mastodons or megateriums.

“It has no horn and looks more like a horse than a rhinoceros.

Its head can reach a height of seven meters to reach the leaves of the treetops "

Tao Deng, China Institute of Vertebrate Paleontology

In this period, the giant rhinoceros, lacking a horn like its

, spread from the Mongolian plateau to southern Asia along the eastern coast of the Tethys Sea and probably across Tibet. The possibility that it was distributed further south in Tibet, which is supported by various evidence, indicates that the Tibetan plateau was not yet the current great wall that slowed the expansion of these giants.

Professor Tao Deng, of the Chinese Academy of Sciences, explains in a note from the institution that “the tropical conditions of the late Oligocene allowed the giant rhino to return north to central Asia, implying that the Tibetan region has not yet it had risen like a high-altitude plateau. "

Scientists calculate that there would be areas of the Tibetan plateau that would not have reached 2,000 meters in altitude and that, therefore, allowed the passage of the most enormous land mammal, only comparable to the largest of the mastodons.

Distribution of giant rhinos during the Oligocene Tao Deng

Specifically, the fossils of the species now discovered by Tao Deng of the Beijing Institute of Vertebrate Paleontology and his team date back 26.5 million years. It likely lived in open woodland areas, feeding on trees like modern giraffes do. The team that publishes the study estimates that it would have weighed around 21 or up to 24 tons and measured five meters high up to the shoulders, plus another two at the neck and head. African elephants, the largest land mammals at this time, weigh on average about six tons, and the tallest giraffe on record was less than six meters. “The giant rhino has no horn and looks more like a horse than a rhino. Its head can reach a height of seven meters to reach the leaves of the treetops ", Deng explains to

.

The skull found is more than a meter long, which gives an idea of ​​the dimensions of the animal.

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