Woolly rhino
- January 3, 2021
- Posted by: OptimizeIAS Team
- Category: DPN Topics
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Woolly rhino
Subject: Environment
Context: Preserved carcass of an Ice Age-era woolly rhino has been unearthed as a result of melting permafrost.
Concept:
- Recent years have seen major discoveries of the remains of mammoths, woolly rhinos, foal, several puppies and cave-lion cubs in parts of Siberia. Such discoveries are becoming too frequent as a result of global warming melting permafrost across Arctic.
- It is an extinct species of rhinoceros found in fossil deposits of the Pliocene and Pleistocene epochs (5.3 million to 11,700 years ago) in Europe, North Africa, and Asia.
- It is estimated it became extinct at the end of most recent ice age.
- It was also present in more temperate, non-glacial regions, where it inhabited grasslands.
- Evidence so far suggest that they were not hunted to extinction by human beings, rather climate change was the cause.