Paraceratherium
Paraceratherium transouralicum
It is one of the largest known land mammals and shows the extensive radiation of rhinoceros relatives in the Oligocene.
Image: MikSed · CC BY-SA 4.0 · Wikimedia Commons
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Characteristics
- Scientific name
- Paraceratherium transouralicum
- Period
- Late Oligocene (Chattian)
- Lived
- 34–23 Ma (34 million years ago)
- Diet
- Herbivore
- Habitat
- Plains, Forest
- Length (estimate)
- 8 m
- Mass (estimate)
- 15,000 kg
Description
Paraceratherium was a gigantic, hornless relative of rhinoceroses, with long legs and a high-set neck. Its teeth and jaws were suited to eating leaves and twigs from trees. No complete skeleton of a single individual is known, so estimates of its height and mass vary between reconstructions. As a large herbivore, it moved through open woodland and drier Asian landscapes.
Habitat
Open woodland and dry plains in Central Asia.
Fossil sites
Hsanda Gol, Ömnögovi
Contemporaries in the database
Sources: Paraceratherium