Today, there are a lot of people on earthanimals that impress with their beauty, uniqueness and appearance. But it is also interesting that in ancient times there were no less interesting animals that could not live up to our days. Thanks to paleontologists and scientists, we have an idea of these unique creatures and can even imagine where they lived, how they looked and what they ate. One of these amazing creatures was a woolly rhinoceros. Now there is enough information about him to find out what he was like, and to suggest why his population disappeared.
Mammal covered with brown long haircover, this is the feature of a woolly rhinoceros. The skeleton, of course, can not give an idea of whether the animal had wool, but the carcasses that were found in the ice were with hair samples. To the animal could tolerate cold, under the main long cover there was a thick undercoat. The neck was wrapped with an additional heater in the form of a mane. Also on the tip of the tail was a hard woolen brush. It is worth noting that the rhinoceros had slightly shortened ears 24 cm high, while his current congenital 30. Also, the tail was shorter, only 45 cm. A small loss of heat occurs through small ears and tail. The skin of the beast was thick, not less than 5 mm. On the shoulders and chest, its thickness reached 15 mm. All these data show that the animal was well adapted to survival in severe areas.
Regardless of whether the male is a female or a female, they bothhad two horns on the bridge of the nose. The structure of these growths is practically the same as that of the present animals. The horns were keratinous fibers. But they had a slightly different shape. If the rhinoceroses habitually used for us wear horns that are more rounded, then they are flattened from the sides of the ancient representatives of the fauna. The length of such a build-up was impressive, and especially long horns had a bent back form. More often the horn was slightly more than one meter, but there were also exceptions, under which the build-up reached 1 m 40 cm. A woolly rhinoceros wore about 15 kilograms on its nose. But to this mass it is worth adding the weight of the second horn, which was half shorter, usually it did not exceed half a meter. To maintain such a load, the nasal septum of the ancient mammal was all ossified. A modern representative of this species does not have such merits.
If you compare the ancient and modern rhino,then in terms of their parameters they practically do not differ from each other. In 1972 a mummified woolly rhinoceros was found in Yakutia. The length of the carcass was 3 m 200 cm long. The height measured along the shoulders was 1 m 50 cm. Both horns remained intact, the main growth was 1 m 25 cm. According to modern estimates, large individuals could weigh 3.5 tonnes. But more often than this figure they did not reach, and therefore the average weight is equated with a black rhinoceros, the larger individuals had a mass the same as a modern white rhinoceros. Woolly rhinoceros at that time in size were inferior only to mammoths, just now these land loses only elephants in dimensions.
