Broadly speaking, the evolution of rhinos began, as with all life forms, soon after our planet was born. But it took an awfully long time before anything like the horned giants of today began to roam the plains and forests of the world.
In fact, Earth was already some 99 percent along its 4.5 billion year path to the present before the first creatures we can definitely place as the ancestors of rhinos emerged not long (in geological terms at least) after the demise of the dinosaurs. These forebears were the perissodactyls, odd-toed browsing mammals that loped onto the evolutionary stage about 55 million years ago.
Quite when our human line and rhinos first intersected is uncertain, but archaeological finds suggest that it happened at least some 700,000 years ago.
This short account follows the rhino’s long, eventful journey through numerous climatic changes and evolutionary adventures to face the challenge of all—surviving the Anthropocene, the age of Homo sapiens.
