The rhino’s journey through time began about 55 million years ago when, not long after the demise of the dinosaurs, the first perissodactyls emerged. We don’t really know how these odd-toed browsing mammals evolved, but we are sure that their early representatives were the ancestors of all horses, rhinos and tapirs.
RHINO TIMELINES
The perissodactyls soon split into two groups: the one giving rise to the horses and the other to the rhinos and tapirs. By 20-odd million years ago many iterations of the early rhinos had come and gone, but the survivors radiated into what is termed the “Golden Age” of rhinos when more than 50 genera roamed the earth. Then followed a slow decline as the climate and landscapes changed in ways that did not suit most of them. Some survived, however, and their evolutionary line persists to this day.
In two parts we trace the rhino’s history: first its evolutionary path and then, from about 700,000 years ago, the interaction between its kind and ours, an interaction that has not been advantageous to the rhino.
Photo credit: David Yarrow
Image Title: The Departed
Updated date: August 21, 2019
