Ceratotherium mauritanicum

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Ceratotherium mauritanicum
Temporal range: 2.6–0.125  Ma
Scientific classification OOjs UI icon edit-ltr.svg
Domain: Eukaryota
Kingdom: Animalia
Phylum: Chordata
Class: Mammalia
Order: Perissodactyla
Family: Rhinocerotidae
Genus: Ceratotherium
Species:
C. mauritanicum
Binomial name
Ceratotherium mauritanicum
(Pomel, 1888)
Synonyms
  • Ceratotherium efficax

Ceratotherium mauritanicum is a species of fossil African rhinoceros found in the Late Pliocene to early Late Pleistocene of Morocco, Tunisia, and Algeria. [1] It is disputed as to whether remains from the Pliocene of East Africa belong to this species, and if so, whether C. mauritanicum is ancestral to the modern white rhinoceros (Ceratotherium simum). During the early Late Pleistocene, sometime between 120-57,000 years ago, it was replaced in North Africa by the modern white rhinoceros. [2]

Contents

Evolution

The phylogenetic position of C. mauritanicum is somewhat disputed. One model see it as to be located in a direct line of ancestry between the primitive Ceratotherium neumayri and the living white rhinoceros (Ceratotherium simum). [3] Alternatively it was proposed to be the descendant of Ceratotherium efficax and an extinct sister taxon to C. simum . It retained primitive characters contemporaneously to the more progressive evolution of the genus Ceratotherium in eastern and southern Africa. [4]

Fossils from the Pliocene of eastern Africa have also proposed to belong to this species. [3] A 2011 study propoposed these remains to belong to a somewhat more primitive species, Ceratotherium efficax. [4] A 2020 study considers C. efficax to be the same species as C. mauritanicum, however. [5]

C. mauritanicum was widely distributed across northwestern Africa during the Quaternary, and often associated with archaeological sites. [1] Petroglyphs in northern Africa occasionally depict rhinoceri but often are too schematic to allow a distinction of the figured species. [6] Those showing characters typical of the white rhinoceros may in fact represent C. mauritanicum instead of C. simum, which may have been very similar in external appearance in life. [1] Most characters used to distinguish C. mauritanicum from the modern C. simum are minor proportional differences, with the only easily discernable difference between the two species being the more robust limbs of C. simum, particularly the metapodial bones. [2]

While its chronological range was historically uncertain, recent chonological work suggests that it was replaced by the modern white rhinoceros during the early Late Pleistocene, sometime between 120-57,000 years ago, likely during a Green Sahara period. [2]

Paleoecology

C. mauritanicum is supposed to have had an ecology very similar to the extant C. simum. It lived in open savannah landscapes with sufficient water and vegetation, a biome that has vanished from the Maghreb since the Early Holocene. Its food was probably dominated by grass. [1]

Related Research Articles

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Perissodactyla</span> Order of hoofed mammals

Perissodactyla is an order of ungulates. The order includes about 17 living species divided into three families: Equidae, Rhinocerotidae (rhinoceroses), and Tapiridae (tapirs). They typically have reduced the weight-bearing toes to three or one of the five original toes, though tapirs retain four toes on their front feet. The nonweight-bearing toes are either present, absent, vestigial, or positioned posteriorly. By contrast, artiodactyls bear most of their weight equally on four or two of the five toes: their third and fourth toes. Another difference between the two is that odd-toed ungulates digest plant cellulose in their intestines, rather than in one or more stomach chambers as even-toed ungulates, with the exception of Suina, do.

<i>Acinonyx</i> Genus of carnivores

Acinonyx is a genus within the Felidae family. The only living species of the genus, the cheetah, lives in open grasslands of Africa and Asia.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Black rhinoceros</span> Species of mammal

The black rhinoceros, black rhino or hook-lipped rhinoceros is a species of rhinoceros, native to eastern and southern Africa including Angola, Botswana, Kenya, Malawi, Mozambique, Namibia, South Africa, Eswatini, Tanzania, Zambia, and Zimbabwe. Although the species is referred to as black, its colours vary from brown to grey. It is the only extant species of the genus Diceros.

<i>Elasmotherium</i> Genus of extinct rhinoceroses

Elasmotherium is an extinct genus of large rhinoceros endemic to Eurasia during Late Miocene through to the Late Pleistocene, with the youngest reliable dates around 39,000 years ago. It was the last surviving member of Elasmotheriinae, a distinctive group of rhinoceroses separate from the group that contains living rhinoceros (Rhinocerotinae).

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Woolly rhinoceros</span> Extinct species of rhinoceros of northern Eurasia

The woolly rhinoceros is an extinct species of rhinoceros that inhabited northern Eurasia during the Pleistocene epoch. The woolly rhinoceros was a member of the Pleistocene megafauna. The woolly rhinoceros was covered with long, thick hair that allowed it to survive in the extremely cold, harsh mammoth steppe. It had a massive hump reaching from its shoulder and fed mainly on herbaceous plants that grew in the steppe. Mummified carcasses preserved in permafrost and many bone remains of woolly rhinoceroses have been found. Images of woolly rhinoceroses are found among cave paintings in Europe and Asia. The species range contracted towards Siberia beginning around 17,000 years ago, with the youngest known records being around 14,000 years old in northeast Siberia, coinciding with the Bølling–Allerød warming, which likely disrupted its habitat.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Rhinoceros</span> Family of mammals

A rhinoceros, commonly abbreviated to rhino, is a member of any of the five extant species of odd-toed ungulates in the family Rhinocerotidae; it can also refer to a member of any of the extinct species of the superfamily Rhinocerotoidea. Two of the extant species are native to Africa, and three to South and Southeast Asia.

<i>Diceros</i> Genus of Rhinocerotidae

Diceros is a genus of rhinoceros containing the extant black rhinoceros (Diceros bicornis) and several extinct species.

<i>Dicerorhinus</i> Genus of mammals

Dicerorhinus is a genus of the family Rhinocerotidae, consisting of a single extant species, the two-horned Sumatran rhinoceros, and several extinct species. The genus likely originated in the Mid to Late Pliocene of Northern Indochina and South China. Many species previously placed in this genus probably belong elsewhere.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">White rhinoceros</span> Largest rhinoceros species

The white rhinoceros, white rhino or square-lipped rhinoceros is the largest extant species of rhinoceros. It has a wide mouth used for grazing and is the most social of all rhino species. The white rhinoceros consists of two subspecies: the southern white rhinoceros, with an estimated 16,803 wild-living animals, and the much rarer northern white rhinoceros. The northern subspecies has very few remaining individuals, with only two confirmed left in 2018, both in captivity. Sudan, the world's last known male Northern white rhinoceros, died in Kenya on 19 March 2018 at age 45.

<i>Ceratotherium</i> Genus of mammals

Ceratotherium is a genus of the family Rhinocerotidae, consisting of a single extant species, the white rhinoceros, and its extinct relative Ceratotherium mauritanicum, of which Ceratotherium efficax is considered a synonym. Another species known as Ceratotherium praecox is now considered a member of the related genus Diceros. The placement of Ceratotherium neumayri from the Late Miocene of Europe and Western Asia within the genus has been questioned, with other authors assigning it to the separate genus Miodiceros. The species 'Ceratotherium’ advenientis is known from the Late Miocene of Italy.

Hadar or Hadar Formation is a paleontological fossil site located in Mille district, Administrative Zone 1 of the Afar Region, Ethiopia, 15 km upstream (west) of the A1 road's bridge across the Awash River.

<i>Coelodonta</i> Extinct genus of rhinoceros

Coelodonta is an extinct genus of rhinoceros that lived in Eurasia between 3.7 million years to 14,000 years ago, in the Pliocene and the Pleistocene epochs. It is best known from the type species, the woolly rhinoceros, which ranged throughout northern Eurasia during the Pleistocene. The earliest known species, Coelodonta thibetana, lived in Tibet during the Pliocene, with the genus spreading to the rest of Eurasia during the Pleistocene.

<i>Asoriculus</i> Extinct genus of red-toothed shrew

Asoriculus is an extinct genus of terrestrial shrews in the subfamily Soricinae and tribe Nectogalini, native to Europe and North Africa.

<i>Chilotherium</i> Extinct genus of rhiniceros

Chilotherium is an extinct genus of rhinocerotids endemic to Eurasia during the Miocene through Pliocene living for 13.7—3.4 mya, existing for approximately 10.3 million years.

<i>Ceratotherium neumayri</i> Extinct species of rhinoceros

Ceratotherium neumayri is a fossil species of rhinoceros from the Late Miocene (Vallesian-Turolian) of the Balkans and Western Asia, with remains known from Greece, Bulgaria, Iran, and Anatolia in Turkey.

<i>Stephanorhinus</i> Extinct genus of rhinoceros

Stephanorhinus is an extinct genus of two-horned rhinoceros native to Eurasia and North Africa that lived during the Late Pliocene to Late Pleistocene. Species of Stephanorhinus were the predominant and often only species of rhinoceros in much of temperate Eurasia, especially Europe, for most of the Pleistocene. The last two species of Stephanorhinus – Merck's rhinoceros and the narrow-nosed rhinoceros – went extinct during the last glacial period.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Southern white rhinoceros</span> Subspecies of rhinoceros

The southern white rhinoceros, or southern white rhino is one of the two subspecies of the white rhinoceros. It is the most common and widespread subspecies of rhinoceros.

Diceros praecox is an extinct species of rhinoceros that lived in Africa during the Pliocene, around 4 million years ago. It has been suggested to be the direct ancestor of the living black rhinoceros (Diceros bicornis).

<i>Eoazara</i> Genus of extinct rhinoceroses

Eoazara xerrii is a species of extinct elasmotheriine rhinoceros from the upper Miocene of Morocco, the first definitive representative of the subfamily in North Africa. It is known from a well preserved skull and postcranial material, preserving the most complete late Miocene rhino skull found in Africa.

Bos buiaensis is an extinct species of cattle. The species is known from a million year old skull fossil found at the archaeological site of Buya, Eritrea in 2003. It was reassembled by excavators from over one hundred shards.

References

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  2. 1 2 3 Aouraghe, Hassan; van der Made, Jan; Haddoumi, Hamid; Agustí, Jordi; Benito-Calvo, Alfonso; Rodríguez-Hidalgo, Antonio; Lazagabaster, Ignacio A.; Souhir, Mohamed; Mhamdi, Hicham; El Atmani, Abderrahman; Ewague, Abdelhadi; Sala-Ramos, Robert; Chacón, M. Gema (2022-10-03). "New materials of the white rhinoceros Ceratotherium simum and auerochs Bos primigenius from a Late Pleistocene terrace of the Oued el Haï (NE Morocco) - two elements of the Maghrebi Palearctic fauna". Historical Biology. 34 (10): 1981–1999. doi:10.1080/08912963.2021.1995381. ISSN   0891-2963.
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