![]() There’s a lot more to find and to learn from Teleoceras aepysoma, the Gray Fossil Site’s “high-bodied” rhinos. Also, these were some of the very last rhinos in North America before they went extinct, but exactly why they disappeared is also unclear.įortunately, more rhino fossils are found at Gray every year, and more research is sure to come. Little Guy and Big Boy are both adult males, so more fossils will be needed to understand how females and young might have been different. ![]() Many questions remain about these rhinos. This unusual feature is probably related to these rhinos’ unusual lifestyle: nearly all barrel-chested rhinos were plains-dwelling grass-eaters, but the Gray Fossil Site species ate leaves in the ancient forest. Name: Coelodonta antiquitatis (Adult Woolly Rhinoceros) Age: Pleistocene 20,000 yrs old. The name aepysoma means “high bodied” in reference to the fact that this species has relatively long front legs compared to other barrel-chested rhinos. This prehistoric fossil will be made accessible to the general public and promoted in partnership with the Royal Belgian Institute of Natural Sciences in. Fossilized Prehistoric Woolly Rhinoceros Tooth(070121n). With two whole skeletons to explore, Rachel and colleagues were able to describe the rhinos in great detail, with special focus on the features that make them unique. In the summer of 2019, nineteen years after the first rhino fossils were identified at Gray, that scientific paper officially presented Teleoceras aepysoma, the Gray Fossil Site’s very own species of rhino. Years after graduating, Rachel was able to revisit and finalize the rhino project to produce a full peer-reviewed scientific publication, working alongside fellow ETSU graduate Laura Emmert and ETSU professor Dr. For the Gray Fossil Site to have rhinos, along with other surprises like alligators, it must be a different age than those other sites In East Tennessee, most fossil sites are either much younger (late Ice Age, tens of thousands of years old) or much older (early Paleozoic Era, hundreds of millions of years old). Before the Gray discovery, no rhinos had ever been found in Tennessee because no other sites in the state preserve fossils within that time range. It had a thick coat and a layer of fat to keep it. ![]() The anatomy of the fossil teeth allows identifying this rhinoceros as a potential forest. Rhinos first appeared in North America about 50 million years ago, and the very last of them vanished from the continent around 4.5 million years ago. The Woolly Rhino is an extinct species of rhinoceros that lived in Europe during the Pleistocene Period. Rhinoceros and Coal beast One of the newly described mammals is a rhinoceros, Epiaceratherium naduongense. Then, in the summer of that year, they identified rhinos. It was clear that this site held remnants of an ancient ecosystem, but in the beginning, no one knew exactly how ancient it might be, or how important. They called in paleontologists, who were able to recognize the remains of plants, turtles, tapirs, elephants, and more. It was early in the year 2000 that a road construction crew first uncovered dark, fossil-rich sediments in the town of Gray. ![]()
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