Chinese Researchers Reveal Ancient Giant Rhinoceros Weighed Four Times As Much As African Elephants

Reconstruction of an ancient giant rhino. (Source: Chen Yu/Chinese Academy of Sciences)

JAKARTA - A new species of ancient giant rhino has been discovered in northwest China. The giant rhinoceros, also known as indricotheres, may be the largest mammal to ever walk on land.

This new species named Paraceratherium linxiaense is one of the largest of its kind, only slightly smaller than Dzungariotherium orgosense, which is generally considered the largest of all indricotheres.

Tao Deng at the Chinese Academy of Sciences in Beijing and his colleagues described P. linxiaense from a fully preserved skull and jawbone, after being found in 26.5 million-year-old deposits in the Linxia Basin in China's Gansu Province, where they have been looking for mammal fossils since the 1980s.

Like other indricotheres, P. linxiaense has a long neck with a slender skull and the first two conical upper incisors. It most likely lived in open forest areas and ate leaves high on trees, as modern giraffes do.

"The giant rhino has no horns and looks more like a horse than a rhino. Its height can reach 7 meters to trace the leaves of tree tops", Deng said as quoted by Newscientist June 17.

The research team whose results are published in 'Communications Biology' estimates, P. linxiaense can weigh up to 21 tons, or the equivalent of four large African elephants.

"These animals would be bigger than any land mammal alive today. The only thing that might be bigger than them is the largest mammoth", said Luke Holbrook of Rowan University in New Jersey, United States.

Indrichothers are thought to have lived mostly in Asia, from Mongolia to Pakistan, but some remains have been found in eastern Europe.