Tuesday, September 06, 2011

Ancient rhino was a living snowplow

From Tibet comes a new fossil species - a woolly rhino with a huge, flat, paddle-like horn that could have been used to clear snow off vegetation to allow grazing in the winter. (It's hard to think of any other use for it, really.) The animal was about the size of a modern rhino and lived 3.7 million years ago (MYA). See the title link for a really cool (ha ha) illustration of what this beast looked like.

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