HomeLatest ArticlesStudy finds important clues on dispersal of giant rhinos across Asia

Study finds important clues on dispersal of giant rhinos across Asia

The giant rhinoceros Paraceratherium was the largest land mammal that ever lived and was found primarily in Asia, especially China, Mongolia, Kazakhstan and Pakistan. However, it was not known for a long time how this genus spread throughout Asia. A recent discovery shed new light on this process.

According to a study published in the journal “Communications Biology” prof. DENG Tao of the Institute of Vertebrate Paleontology and Paleoanthropology (IVPP) of the Chinese Academy of Sciences and his collaborators from China and the United States recently reported a new species, Paraceratherium linxiaense. sp. November, which offers important clues to the distribution of giant rhinos across Asia.

Fossils of the new species include a completely preserved skull and mandible with an associated atlas, as well as the axis and two thoracic vertebrae of another individual. The fossils were recovered from late Oligocene deposits in the Linxia Basin of Gansu Province, China, located on the northeastern border of the Tibetan Plateau.

Phylogenetic analysis yielded a single most parsimonious tree that places P. linxiaense as a derived giant rhinoceros within a monophyletic clade of Oligocene Asian paraceratheria. Within the Paraceratherium clade, the researchers’ phylogenetic analysis produced a series of successively more derived species – from P. grangeri through P. huangheense, P. asiaticum and P. bugtiense – finally ending in P. lepidum and P. linxiaense. P. linxiaense is highly specialized, as is P. lepidum, and both are derived from P. bugtiense.

The adaptation of the atlas and axis to the large body and long neck of the giant rhinoceros already characterized P. grangeri and P. bugtiense and was further developed in P. linxiaense, whose atlas is elongated, indicative of a long neck and a higher axis with an almost horizontal position for its posterior articular facet . These characteristics correlate with a more flexible neck.

The giant rhinoceros of western Pakistan comes from Oligocene strata and represents a single species, Paraceratherium bugtiense. On the other hand, the rest of the genus Paraceratherium, which is spread over the Mongolian Plateau, northwestern China, and the area north of the Tibetan Plateau to Kazakhstan, is highly diversified.

The researchers found that all six species of Paraceratherium are sister to Aralotheria and form a monophyletic clade in which P. grangeri is the most primitive, followed by P. huangheense and P. asiaticum.

The researchers were thus able to determine that in the early Oligocene, P. asiaticum dispersed westward into Kazakhstan and its progeny expanded into South Asia as P. bugtiense. In the late Oligocene, Paraceratherium returned to the north, crossing the Tibetan area and producing P. lepidium in the west in Kazakhstan and P. linxiaense in the east in the Linxia Basin.

Scientists noted the early Oligocene aridity in Central Asia at a time when South Asia was relatively humid, with a mosaic of forested and open landscapes. “Late Oligocene tropical conditions allowed the giant rhinoceros to return north to Central Asia, suggesting that the Tibetan area was still not raised as a plateau,” said Prof. DENG.

During the Oligocene, the giant rhinoceros was apparently free to disperse from the Mongolian Plateau into South Asia along the eastern coast of the Tethys Ocean and possibly across Tibet. The topographical possibility that the giant rhinoceros crossed the Tibetan region to reach the Indo-Pakistan subcontinent in the Oligocene may be supported by additional evidence.

The evolution and migration from P. bugtiense to P. linxiaense and P. lepidum until the late Oligocene show that the “Tibetan Plateau” was not yet an obstacle to the movement of the largest land mammal.

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