Description
The external appearance of woolly rhinos is known from mummified individuals from Siberia as well as cave paintings. An adult woolly rhinoceros was typically around 3 to 3.8 metres (10 to 12.5 feet) in length, with an estimated weight of around 2,721–3,175 kg (6,000–7,000 lb). The woolly rhinoceros could grow to be 2 m (6.6 ft) tall; the body size was thus comparable, or slightly larger than, the extant White rhinoceros. Two horns on the skull were made of keratin, the anterior horn being 61 cm (24 in) in length, with a smaller horn between its eyes. It had thick, long fur, small ears, short, thick legs, and a stocky body. Cave paintings suggest a wide dark band between the front and hind legs, but the feature is not universal, and identification of pictured rhinoceroses as woolly rhinoceros is uncertain.
As the last and most derived member of the Pleistocene rhinoceros lineage, the woolly rhinoceros was supremely well adapted to its environment. Stocky limbs and thick woolly pelage made it well suited to the steppe-tundra environment prevalent across the Palearctic ecozone during the Pleistocene glaciations. Like the vast majority of rhinoceroses, the body plan of the woolly rhinoceros adhered to a conservative morphology, like the first rhinoceroses seen in the late Eocene.
Its shape was known only from prehistoric cave drawings until a completely preserved specimen (missing only the fur and hooves) was discovered in a tar pit in Starunia, Poland. The specimen, an adult female, is now on display in the Polish Academy of Sciences' Museum of Natural History in Kraków.
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