A woolly rhinoceros fossil dug up by a team of Chinese and American scientists is believed to be the oldest of its kind yet found. It was found on the Tibetan Plateau.
The find has led researchers to think 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. This was a long time before similar beasts roamed northern Asia and Europe in those regions' Ice Ages.
A team of geologists found a skull and lower jaw in the Himalayas in 2007. Their study has been published in the current issue of Science. This rhino, they say, is at least a million years older than others found before.
Older than expected
Researchers in the Himalayas have uncovered a woolly rhinoceros a million years older than the ones that roamed Europe and Asia in the ice age.
