The world's most primitive woolly rhinoceros, dating back to the Pliocene epoch (approximately 3.7 million years ago) in Tibet, provides crucial evidence for solving the mystery of this type of animal's evolution. These precious fossils were collected by an expedition team from the Institute of Vertebrate Paleontology and Paleoanthropology, Chinese Academy of Sciences, at a high altitude in the Zanda Basin of the Ali region in the western Himalayas of Tibet. Researchers, including Deng Tao, studied and named a new species of woolly rhinoceros—the Tibetan woolly rhinoceros (Coelodonta thibetana Deng et al., 2011). Its discovery proves that some members of the Ice Age fauna had already evolved and developed on the Qinghai-Tibet Plateau before the Quaternary period.
woolly rhinoceros
Mammoth (Mammuthus primigenius)
