T h e M a m m o t h F
a u n a .
Woolly rhinoceros
If somebody ask a hunter from central Africa: “ What
is the most furious and dangerous animal here? ”, he will certainly answer: “ A black
rhinoceros. Eperiencing danger, he furiously rushes on everybody without analysis, and
everyone will be poor who will rise at his path ”.
Probably, his ancient relative, the woolly rhinoceros, who lived in Siberia many
years ago, had also the same irritable and furious customs. On a comparison with a
mammoth, the woolly rhinoceros was low, his growth with a withers was about 160 -170 cm .
But he had a massive body with length more than 3,5 meters and weight up to 3 tons.
Low-legged, stocky, powerful and very mobile rhinoceros conceded on his sizes and force
only to a mammoth. In addition to it he was good armed. |

Woolly rhinoceros

The reconstructed skeleton of woolly rhinoceros from the Museum of Siberian
Natural History. |
Two
horns grew one above other on the nose and forehead of rhinoceros. A length of front horn
reached 80-130 cm and it weighed more than 10 kilograms, the back horn was much shorter
— 40-50 cm . The horns were placed on special thickenings - callosities of forehead and
nose bones. Their diameter at the basis reached 25- 30 cm. The horn of the woolly
rhinoceros was not round, it was flattened a little by sides and sabre-curved. If someone
cuts this horn across, he will see, that it consists of separate long filaments like a
hair, only much thicker. The filaments are pasted together much densely by mass of
keratin. Rhinoceros not frequently had to use horns for a guard. More often they were a
lever helped him to worn through shrubs.
The woolly rhinoceroses as well as mammoths lived in cold tundra-steppes. They
settled in wide flood-lands of the rivers and on shores of the lake hollows. There, in
dense vegetation of waterlogged lowers they easily found a forage to itself. They ate a
grass, shrubby sprouts, sprouts of deciduous trees, willow, alder and birch.
The rhinoceroses were single animals, they never united in herds. Only a time per
three or four years, for short conjugal period a male and female made a pair. Such family
fastly broke up, then a female bore one young, which at first grazed near her, and in some
months became the adult, and then searched to itself for new territory for eating.
The rhinoceroses, as well as all representatives of the mammoth fauna, were
perfectly adapted to climatic conditions of the Ice Age. Their bodies entirely were
covered with a light-brown wool. It consisted of two kinds of hair - thin dense undercoat
and long rigid covering hair, which hanged down on each side, and on a withers and neck
organized a small mane.
The woolly rhinoceroses have appeared more than 100 thousand years ago. They lived
on the whole territory of Eurasia, from British islands up to Seaside. But most of their
remains were found in Siberia. The woolly rhinoceroses have died out even earlier, than
mammoths - approximately 15 — 20 thousand years ago. They, apparently, could not adapt
to warming of the climate too.
|
|