A woolly rhinoceros fossil dug up by a team of Chinese and American palaeontologists on the Tibetan Plateau is believed to be the oldest specimen of its kind yet found. The extraordinary find has led researchers to hypothesise that some giants such as woolly mammoths, great sloths and sabre-tooth cats may have evolved in highlands before the Ice Age.
The woolly rhino lived some 3.6 million years ago in the Pliocene period - long before similar beasts roamed northern Asia and Europe in those regions' ice ages.
A team of geologists and palaeontologists - led by Dr Wang Xiaoming, from the Natural History Museum of Los Angeles county, and Qiang Li, of the Chinese Academy of Sciences' Institute of Vertebrate Palaeontology and Palaeoanthropology - uncovered a skull and lower jaw of the new species in the Himalayas in 2007.
Their study has been published in the current issue of Science. Funds for the research came from the National Natural Science Foundation of China, the US National Geographic Society and the US National Science Foundation.
The team says the existence of this ancient rhino supports the idea that the frosty Tibetan foothills of the Himalayas were the evolutionary cradle for these later animals.
'It is the oldest specimen discovered so far,' Wang said. 'It is at least a million years older, or more, than any other woolly rhinos we have known. 'It's quite well preserved.'
