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Woolly Rhinoceros Fossil range: Late Pleistocene to Recent
Conservation status
Extinct (fossil)
Scientific classification
Kingdom: Animalia Phylum: Chordata Class: Mammalia Order: Perissodactyla Family: Rhinocerotidae Genus: Coelodonta Bronn, 1831 Species: C. antiquitatis
Binomial name
Coelodonta antiquitatis (Blumenbach, 1807)

The Woolly Rhinoceros (Coelodonta antiquitatis) is an extinct species of rhinoceros that lived during the Pleistocene epoch, but survived the last ice age. The woolly rhinoceros are members of the Pleistocene megafauna. It lived on the northern steppes of Eurasia, where its relative the Giant Unicorn (Elasmotherium) had a more southern range. It had a flat horn that enabled it to push aside snow in order to graze. The Woolly Rhino also had thick fur and a layer of thick fat to keep it warm from the cold conditions it endured.

This plant-eater was about 3.7 m (11 feet) long. It had two horns on its snout, the anterior one larger than the one between its eyes about 1 m (3 feet) long; both were made of matted hair. It had long hair, small ears, short, thick legs, and a stocky body. Cave paintings suggest a wide dark band between the front and hind legs, but it is not universal and identification of rhino as woolly rhinoceros is uncertain. The Woolly Rhinoceros used its horns to sweep snow away from vegetation so it could eat in the winter.

As the last and most derived member of the Pleistocene rhinoceros lineage, the woolly rhino was supremely well adapted to its environment. Stocky limbs and thick woolly pelage made it well suited to the steppe-tundra environment prevalent across the Palaearctic during the Pleistocene glaciations. Its geographical range expanded and contracted with the alternating cold and warm cycles, forcing populations to migrate or perish as the glaciers receded. Like the vast majority of rhinoceri both living and extinct, the body plan of the woolly rhino adhered to the conservative morphology displayed in the most primitive rhinoceroses, first seen in the late Eocene.

Controversy has long surrounded the precise dietary preference of Coelodonta as past investigations have found both grazing and browsing modes of life to be plausible. The palaeodiet of the woolly rhinoceros has been reconstructed using several lines of evidence. Climatic reconstructions indicate the preferred environment to have been cold and arid steppe-tundra, with large herbivores forming an important part of the feedback cycle. Pollen analysis shows a prevalence of grasses and sedges within a more complicated vegetation mosaic.^{[citation needed]}

A strain vector biomechanical investigation of the skull, mandible and teeth of a well-preserved last cold stage individual recovered from Whitemoor Haye, Staffordshire, revealed musculature and dental characteristics that support a grazing feeding preference. In particular, the enlargement of the temporalis and neck muscles is consistent with that required to resist the large tugging forces generated when taking large mouthfuls of fodder from the ground. The presence of a large diastema supports this theory.

Comparisons with extant perissodactyls confirm that Coelodonta was a hindgut fermentor with a single stomach, and as such would have grazed upon cellulose-rich protein-poor fodder. This method of digestion would have required a large throughput of food and thus links the large mouthful size to the low nutritive content of the chosen grasses and sedges.^[1]

It was hunted by early humans, who may have caused its extinction. Its shape was known only from prehistoric cave drawings until a completely preserved specimen (missing only the fur and hooves) was discovered in a tar pit in Starunia, Poland. The specimen, an adult female, is now on display in the Polish Academy of Sciences' Museum of Natural History in Kraków. The Woolly Rhino roamed much of Northern Europe and was common in the then cold, arid desert that is southern England and the North Sea today. During Greenland Stadial 2 (Last Glacial Maximum) the North Sea did not exist as sea levels were up to 125 metres lower than today.

The Woolly Rhino co-existed with Woolly Mammoth and several other now extinct larger mammals. No specimens have been dated in the U.K. after 15,000 14C years B.P.^{[citation needed]}

Recent carbon dating has shown that populations survived as recently as 8,000 B.C. in Western Siberia.

• It must be noted that 8,000 B.C. is equivalent to 10,000 - 11,000 years B.P. (Before Present) and the accuracy of this date is uncertain as several radiocarbon plateaus exist around this time. The extinction doesn't coincide with the end of the last ice age but does coincide however, with a minor yet severe climatic reversal that lasted for ~1,000- 1,250 years, the Younger Dryas (GS1 - Greenland Stadial 1), characterised by glacial readvances and severe cooling globally, a brief interlude in the continuing warming subsequent to the termination of the last major ice age (GS2), thought to have been due to a shutdown of the ocean conveyor belt system due to huge influxes of cold, fresh water from the preceding sustained glacial melting during the warmer Interstadial (GI1 - Greenland Interstadial 1 - ca.16,000 - 11,450 14c years B.P.).

A close relative, the Sumatran Rhinoceros (Dicerorhinus sumatrensis), still survives in Southeast Asia, but is highly endangered.

• Walking with Beasts - was depicted as aggressive when provoked. Attacked and injured a Neanderthal man.

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