How long have rhinoceros been around

Similarly, statements about the Sumatran rhinoceros in particular being labelled a "living fossil" prompted Darren Naish to protest and debunk such a notion. To illustrate this, here's an idea of what rhinos looked like 50 million years ago: This is Hyrachyus , a fairly small animal thought to represent the early perissodactyls from which rhinos evolved; Photo by Carl Wozniak Today's rhinos belong to lineages that evolved only around 16 million years ago; for much of their history, rhinos evolved a wide variety of shapes and sizes, and most of the earlier species didn't even have horns.

Here are some reconstructions of a selection of prehistoric rhinos: Hyracodon , Eocene Approximately 35 million years ago ; By Charles R. Knight Paraceratherium , Oligocene Approximately 25 million years ago ; By Chen Yu Cadurcodon , Eocene Approximately 35 million years ago ; By Roman Yevseyev Metamynodon , Eocene Approximately 35 million years ago ; By Heinrich Harder Chilotherium , Miocene Approximately 7 million years ago ; By meribenni Elasmotherium , Pleistocene Approximately 50, years ago ; By Dmitry Bogdanov Using the word 'prehistoric' to describe modern-day rhinos can carry a negative connotation, insinuating that these creatures are primitive and increasingly irrelevant and obsolete, relicts from a bygone era.

This gives rise to the dangerous notion that perhaps rhinos are ill-adapted to the challenges of the modern world, and doomed to die out, like Sega consoles in the age of PlayStations and Xboxes. Why should we bother investing so much time and resources into cracking down on poaching, and saving the rhinos, if we see them as evolutionary failures anyway? Extinction is the eventual fate of every species that has ever lived, but that's beside the point Javan rhinoceros Rhinoceros sondaicus ; Photo by Alain Compost , from International Rhino Foundation This probably ties in with the erroneous yet prevalent belief that evolution is solely about progress, changing from a primitive to a more advanced state.

To say that a particular lifeform is a prehistoric survivor is to often hint that it has stagnated and failed to keep on improving, a claim that fails to stand up to closer scrutiny when one looks at both fossil and historical records. After all, rhinos were highly successful animals, and in the course of their long history, came to inhabit much of North America, Eurasia, and Africa.

The remains of various extinct rhino species are abundant in many fossil deposits, and judging by the sheer number of bones found at some localities, must have occurred in large herds that dominated the landscape.

Our 5 extant species of rhino were themselves once widely distributed across much of Africa and Asia; their much reduced range and numbers today reflect overhunting by humans, not an inability to adapt to the challenges of the modern environment. They have the potential to thrive once again if we allow them to. On Oct. He was not a victim of poaching, however, and the conservancy was investigating the cause of death.

On March 20, , the conservancy announced the death of the last male northern white rhino , Sudan. There are now only two northern white rhinos left in the world, both living in captivity, according to the World Wildlife Fund.

The captive northern white rhinos are two females — Najin, Sudan's daughter, and Fatu, Najin's daughter — which live in the Ol Pejeta Conservancy in Kenya. The two females are incapable of a successful pregnancy: Najin is too old and issues with her legs make it impossible for her to support the weight of a mounting male; Fatu has a uterine condition that will likely keep her from breeding, according to experts.

With natural breeding attempts nixed for the northern white rhinos, conservationists have turned to in vitro fertilization. However, IVF in these rhinoceroses comes with its own set of challenges, including figuring out how to get immature eggs to develop outside of the female's body and also how to inject sperm into these eggs. As for the Sumatran rhinos, they are hanging on by a thread as well. Along with the Javan rhino, Sumatran rhinos are barely hanging on in the wild.

They went extinct in Vietnam in and in Malaysia in , according to the International Rhino Foundation. Small populations of the subspecies survive in three national parks in Sumatra. And in March , conservationists captured a live Sumatran rhinoceros in the Indonesian part of the island of Borneo for the first time.

Though a camera-trap image snapped in revealed Sumatran rhinos did survive in this region called Kalimantan, the capture of the female marked the first time in 40 years that humans had physically contacted a live Sumatran rhino there.

Rhino horns are made of keratin, which is also the key component of human hair and fingernails. But the horns are not just dense clumps of hair. CT scans have shown dense mineral deposits of calcium and melanin in the core of the horn. The calcium makes the horn stronger, and the melanin protects it from the sun's UV rays, according to scientists at Ohio University.

The horns are similar to horse hooves, turtle beaks and cockatoo bills, said Tobin Hieronymus, an OU doctoral student. This version of the page will remain live for reference purposes as we work to update the content across our website. But relentless hunting by European settlers saw rhino numbers and distribution quickly decline. Poaching also escalated during the s and s as demand grew for rhino horn, a prized ingredient in traditional Asian medicines - leaving both species at risk.

Thanks to vigorous conservation and anti-poaching efforts and an international ban on the trade in rhino horn, some African rhino populations are now stable or increasing. However, most of the continent's remaining rhinos are found in just four countries — South Africa, Namibia, Zimbabwe and Kenya. Very few African rhinos now survive outside of protected areas and sanctuaries.

And poaching is again threatening the survival of some populations. What WWF is doing WWF is helping to tackle the major threats by strengthening protected areas, preserving rhino habitat, and helping to stamp out the illegal trade in rhino horn. WWF is: Working with TRAFFIC on the Wildlife Crime Initiative to investigate, expose and crack down on poaching and the illegal trade in rhino horn — and reduce demand; Helping to secure protected areas and create new ones; Promoting wildlife-based tourism that helps fund conservation efforts and gives local communities an income from living alongside wildlife; Working with communities living around protected areas to help them use their natural resources more sustainably; and Supporting the translocation of rhinos to create new, secure populations.

The WWF Wildlife Crime Scorecard report selects 23 range, transit and consumer countries from Asia and Africa facing the highest levels of illegal trade in elephant ivory, rhino horn and tiger parts.

The Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species CITES is an international agreement between governments, that aims to ensure that international trade in specimens of wild animals and plants does not threaten their survival and it accords varying degrees of protection to more than 33, species of animals and plants.

Archive Content Please note: This page has been archived and its content may no longer be up-to-date. At first glance, this towering behemoth doesn't even look much like a rhino.

Paraceratherium was a genus of giant rhinos that lived during the Oligocene epoch some million years ago. Among them were some of the largest land mammals to ever walk the earth!

Although the exact size of Paraceratherium is unknown because we have only incomplete fossils to go on, scientists believe they were about 4. Elasmotherium meaning "thin plate beast" was another prehistoric giant, though at around three metres tall, it was no match for Paraceratherium. Its standout feature? One seriously massive horn.

No Elasmotherium horns have ever been unearthed rhino horns don't fossilise , but their skulls show signs of where these massive weapons would have once attached. Estimating the horn's size is a bit of a guessing game but it's possible they were as long as a metre! Unlike other members of the rhinoceros family, Elasmotherium also had pretty long legs, allowing it to run more like a horse.

It might not get as much time in the spotlight as the woolly mammoth or the Ice Age fame , but the woolly rhinoceros Coelodonta antiquitatis was just as cool. It lived during the Pleistocene epoch some 2.