''Coelodonta'' (, from the

Greek Greek may refer to: Greece Anything of, from, or related to Greece, a country in Southern Europe: *Greeks, an ethnic group. *Greek language, a branch of the Indo-European language family. **Proto-Greek language, the assumed last common ancestor ...

κοιλία, ''koilía'' and οδούς, ''odoús'', "hollow tooth", in reference to the deep grooves of their molars) is an extinct

genus Genus ( plural genera ) is a taxonomic rank used in the biological classification of living and fossil organisms as well as viruses. In the hierarchy of biological classification, genus comes above species and below family. In binomial nom ...

rhinoceros A rhinoceros (; ; ), commonly abbreviated to rhino, is a member of any of the five extant species (or numerous extinct species) of odd-toed ungulates in the family Rhinocerotidae. (It can also refer to a member of any of the extinct specie ...

that lived in

Eurasia Eurasia (, ) is the largest continental area on Earth, comprising all of Europe and Asia. Primarily in the Northern and Eastern Hemispheres, it spans from the British Isles and the Iberian Peninsula in the west to the Japanese archipelag ...

between 3.7 million years to 10,000 years before the present, in the

Pliocene The Pliocene ( ; also Pleiocene) is the epoch in the geologic time scale that extends from 5.333 million to 2.58Pleistocene The Pleistocene ( , often referred to as the ''Ice age'') is the geological Epoch (geology), epoch that lasted from about 2,580,000 to 11,700 years ago, spanning the Earth's most recent period of repeated glaciations. Before a change was fina ...

epochs. It is best known from the type species, the

woolly rhinoceros The woolly rhinoceros (''Coelodonta antiquitatis'') is an extinct species of rhinoceros that was common throughout Europe and Asia during the Pleistocene epoch and survived until the end of the last glacial period. The woolly rhinoceros was a me ...

(''Coelodonta antiquitatis''), which ranged throughout northern Eurasia during the

Pleistocene The Pleistocene ( , often referred to as the ''Ice age'') is the geological Epoch (geology), epoch that lasted from about 2,580,000 to 11,700 years ago, spanning the Earth's most recent period of repeated glaciations. Before a change was fina ...

. The earliest known species, '' Coelodonta thibetana,'' lived in

Tibet Tibet (; ''Böd''; ) is a region in East Asia, covering much of the Tibetan Plateau and spanning about . It is the traditional homeland of the Tibetan people. Also resident on the plateau are some other ethnic groups such as Monpa people, ...

during the

Pliocene The Pliocene ( ; also Pleiocene) is the epoch in the geologic time scale that extends from 5.333 million to 2.58 Skulls of

Species recognised as members of ''Coelodonta'', according to Deng ''et al''. (2011), include: * '' Coelodonta thibetana'' (Deng et al. 2011): The most primitive species of the genus, inhabited the

Tibetan Plateau The Tibetan Plateau (, also known as the Qinghai–Tibet Plateau or the Qing–Zang Plateau () or as the Himalayan Plateau in India, is a vast elevated plateau located at the intersection of Central, South and East Asia covering most of the Ti ...

during the Pliocene. * ''Coelodonta nihowanensis'' (Chow, 1978): A primitive species from northern

China China, officially the People's Republic of China (PRC), is a country in East Asia. It is the world's List of countries and dependencies by population, most populous country, with a Population of China, population exceeding 1.4 billion, slig ...

, it lived in the earliest Pleistocene. * ''

Coelodonta tologoijensis ''Coelodonta tologoijensis'' is an extinct species of woolly rhino (''Coelodonta''). It was originally described as an Asian species. Subsequently one skull found in the Kyffhauser hills near the town of Bad Frankenhausen, Germany, was assigned ...

'' (Beliajeva, 1966): Appeared in northern China around 2 million years ago, spreading to Europe in the Middle Pleistocene, 470,000 years ago. It was probably the direct ancestor of the woolly rhinoceros. * ''

Coelodonta antiquitatis ''Coelodonta'' (, from the Greek κοιλία, ''koilía'' and οδούς, ''odoús'', "hollow tooth", in reference to the deep grooves of their molars) is an extinct genus of rhinoceros that lived in Eurasia between 3.7 million years to 10,000 ...

'' (Blumenbach, 1799): The type species of the genus, commonly known as the woolly rhinoceros. It lived in the steppes of northern Eurasia during the Late Pleistocene, and was the last living representative of the genus.

Phylogeny

The authors of the description of the species '' C. thibetana'' (Deng ''et al''., 2011) proposed a

cladogram A cladogram (from Greek ''clados'' "branch" and ''gramma'' "character") is a diagram used in cladistics to show relations among organisms. A cladogram is not, however, an evolutionary tree because it does not show how ancestors are related to ...

to place phylogenetically their position in relation to other members of Rhinocerotidae, using the five extant species of rhinoceros and 13 extinct species. They found that ''Coelodonta'' was the

sister taxon In phylogenetics, a sister group or sister taxon, also called an adelphotaxon, comprises the closest relative(s) of another given unit in an evolutionary tree. Definition The expression is most easily illustrated by a cladogram: Taxon A and ...

of the species '' Stephanorhinus hemitoechus''. A 2019 study based on a 1.78 million year old ''

Stephanorhinus ''Stephanorhinus'' is an extinct genus of two-horned rhinoceros native to Eurasia and North Africa that lived during the Pliocene to Late Pleistocene. Species of ''Stephanorhinus'' were the predominant and often only species of rhinoceros in much ...

. sp'' dental

proteome The proteome is the entire set of proteins that is, or can be, expressed by a genome, cell, tissue, or organism at a certain time. It is the set of expressed proteins in a given type of cell or organism, at a given time, under defined conditions. ...

from

Georgia Georgia most commonly refers to: * Georgia (country), a country in the Caucasus region of Eurasia * Georgia (U.S. state), a state in the Southeast United States Georgia may also refer to: Places Historical states and entities * Related to the ...

suggested the

paraphyly In taxonomy, a group is paraphyletic if it consists of the group's last common ancestor and most of its descendants, excluding a few monophyletic subgroups. The group is said to be paraphyletic ''with respect to'' the excluded subgroups. In ...

of ''Stephanorhinus.'' Later DNA studies have found the woolly rhinoceros is closely related to Merck's rhinoceros (''

Stephanorhinus kirchbergensis ''Stephanorhinus kirchbergensis'', also known as Merck's rhinoceros or the forest rhinoceros, is an extinct species of rhino known from the Middle to Late Pleistocene of Eurasia. One of the last members of the genus ''Stephanorhinus'', it is con ...

''), with an estimated divergence 5.5 million years ago. These two species in turn are most closely related to the

Sumatran rhinoceros The Sumatran rhinoceros (''Dicerorhinus sumatrensis''), also known as the Sumatran rhino, hairy rhinoceros or Asian two-horned rhinoceros, is a rare member of the family Rhinocerotidae and one of five extant species of rhinoceros. It is the o ...

(''Dicerorhinus sumatrensis'') amongst living rhinoceros.

Cladogram A cladogram (from Greek ''clados'' "branch" and ''gramma'' "character") is a diagram used in cladistics to show relations among organisms. A cladogram is not, however, an evolutionary tree because it does not show how ancestors are related to ...

after Liu et al, 2021: denotes extinct taxa

References

External links

Paleobiology Database
{{Taxonbar, from=Q2540022 Pliocene first appearances Pliocene rhinoceroses Pleistocene genus extinctions Pleistocene rhinoceroses Pleistocene mammals of Europe Pleistocene mammals of Asia Taxa named by Heinrich Georg Bronn