Fossils recently found in northwest China’s Gansu province reveal that a new species of giant rhino had lived more than 26 million years ago, a source said.
The fossils including a skull and two vertebrae found in the reddish-brown sandstone of the Linxia basin shed light on how the ancient rhinos, some of the largest land mammals ever, evolved and moved across Asia.
The dispersal of giant rhino fossils – others have been found on the far side of the Himalayas in Pakistan – indicate, ‘Tibet, as a plateau, did not yet exist and was not yet a barrier to exchange of largest land mammals,’ the source added.
Giant rhinos like the newly discovered species, named Paraceratherium linxiaense, were hornless, long-necked herbivores, weighing around 20 tonnes equivalent to several elephants and likely to be living in the open woodlands.
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