Ancient Greek
Ancient Greek (, ; ) includes the forms of the Greek language used in ancient Greece and the classical antiquity, ancient world from around 1500 BC to 300 BC. It is often roughly divided into the following periods: Mycenaean Greek (), Greek ...
κοῖλος (''koîlos''), meaning "hollow", and οδούς (''odoús''), meaning "tooth", in reference to the deep grooves of their molars) is an extinct
genus
Genus (; : genera ) is a taxonomic rank above species and below family (taxonomy), family as used in the biological classification of extant taxon, living and fossil organisms as well as Virus classification#ICTV classification, viruses. In bino ...
of
Eurasia
Eurasia ( , ) is a continental area on Earth, comprising all of Europe and Asia. According to some geographers, Physical geography, physiographically, Eurasia is a single supercontinent. The concept of Europe and Asia as distinct continents d ...
n
rhinoceros
A rhinoceros ( ; ; ; : rhinoceros or rhinoceroses), commonly abbreviated to rhino, is a member of any of the five extant taxon, extant species (or numerous extinct species) of odd-toed ungulates (perissodactyls) in the family (biology), famil ...
es that lived from about 3.7 million years to 14,000 years ago, in the
Pliocene
The Pliocene ( ; also Pleiocene) is the epoch (geology), epoch in the geologic time scale that extends from 5.33 to 2.58Pleistocene
The Pleistocene ( ; referred to colloquially as the ''ice age, Ice Age'') is the geological epoch (geology), epoch that lasted from to 11,700 years ago, spanning the Earth's most recent period of repeated glaciations. Before a change was fin ...
epochs. It is best known from the type species, the
woolly rhinoceros
The woolly rhinoceros (''Coelodonta antiquitatis'') is an extinct species of rhinoceros that inhabited northern Eurasia during the Pleistocene epoch. The woolly rhinoceros was a member of the Pleistocene megafauna. The woolly rhinoceros was larg ...
(''Coelodonta antiquitatis''), which ranged throughout northern Eurasia during the
Pleistocene
The Pleistocene ( ; referred to colloquially as the ''ice age, Ice Age'') is the geological epoch (geology), epoch that lasted from to 11,700 years ago, spanning the Earth's most recent period of repeated glaciations. Before a change was fin ...
. The earliest known species, ''
Coelodonta thibetana
''Coelodonta thibetana'', the Tibetan woolly rhinoceros, is an extinct species of the genus ''Coelodonta'' native to western Himalayas that lived during the middle Pliocene epoch. ''C. thibetana'' is known from the holotype IVPP V15908, a p ...
,'' lived in
Tibet
Tibet (; ''Böd''; ), or Greater Tibet, is a region in the western part of East Asia, covering much of the Tibetan Plateau and spanning about . It is the homeland of the Tibetan people. Also resident on the plateau are other ethnic groups s ...
during the
Pliocene
The Pliocene ( ; also Pleiocene) is the epoch (geology), epoch in the geologic time scale that extends from 5.33 to 2.58
Species recognised as members of ''Coelodonta'', according to Deng ''et al''. (2011), include:
* ''
Coelodonta thibetana
''Coelodonta thibetana'', the Tibetan woolly rhinoceros, is an extinct species of the genus ''Coelodonta'' native to western Himalayas that lived during the middle Pliocene epoch. ''C. thibetana'' is known from the holotype IVPP V15908, a p ...
'' (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 Qingzang Plateau, is a vast elevated plateau located at the intersection of Central Asia, Central, South Asia, South, and East Asia. Geographically, it is located to the north of H ...
during the
Pliocene
The Pliocene ( ; also Pleiocene) is the epoch (geology), epoch in the geologic time scale that extends from 5.33 to 2.58
* ''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. With population of China, a population exceeding 1.4 billion, it is the list of countries by population (United Nations), second-most populous country after ...
, it lived in the earliest Pleistocene.
* '' Coelodonta tologoijensis'' (Beliajeva, 1966): Appeared in northern China around 2 million years ago, and was present in eastern Eurasia during the Early-Middle Pleistocene.
* ''
Coelodonta antiquitatis
''Coelodonta'' (, from the Ancient Greek κοῖλος (''koîlos''), meaning "hollow", and οδούς (''odoús''), meaning "tooth", in reference to the deep grooves of their molars) is an extinct genus of Eurasian rhinoceroses that lived from ...
'' (Blumenbach, 1799): The type species of the genus, commonly known as the woolly rhinoceros. It lived in the steppes of northern Eurasia during the Middle and Late Pleistocene, and was the last living representative of the genus.
Phylogeny
DNA evidence suggests that 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
''Dicerorhinus'' (Greek: "two" (dio), "horn" (keratos), "nose" (rhinos)) is a genus of the family Rhinocerotidae, consisting of a single extant species, the two-horned Sumatran rhinoceros (''D. sumatrensis''), and several extinct species. The ge ...
'' ''sumatrensis'') is the closest living relative of ''Coelodonta'', with ''Coelodonta'' also being closely related to the extinct genus ''
Stephanorhinus
''Stephanorhinus'' is an extinct genus of two-horned rhinoceros native to Eurasia and North Africa that lived during the Late Pliocene to Late Pleistocene. Species of ''Stephanorhinus'' were the predominant and often only species of rhinoceros in ...
''.
Cladogram
A cladogram (from Greek language, Greek ''clados'' "branch" and ''gramma'' "character") is a diagram used in cladistics to show relations among organisms. A cladogram is not, however, an Phylogenetic tree, evolutionary tree because it does not s ...
of living and subfossil rhinoceros species based on nuclear DNA after Liu et al, 2021:
denotes extinct taxa
Bayesian
Thomas Bayes ( ; c. 1701 – 1761) was an English statistician, philosopher, and Presbyterian minister.
Bayesian ( or ) may be either any of a range of concepts and approaches that relate to statistical methods based on Bayes' theorem
Bayes ...
morphological phylogeny (Pandolfi, 2023) Note: This excludes living African rhinoceros species.