March 01, 2008	Saturday	Safar 22, 1429

PARIS: A 25-million year old rhino bone shows that Anatolia, the bulk of modern-day Turkey, was not then encircled by water, as some geologists have contended, according to a study published on Friday.

The first evidence that a pre-historic rhinoceros from the genus Paraceratherium wandered the rugged hills and plateaus of Anatolia in the late Oligecene era proves that a land passage to Asia existed at the same time, said the study.

The Anatolian peninsula today juts out from the Asia continent, bounded on three sides by water: the Black Sea to the north, the Mediterranean to the south, and the Aegean in the east.

The region has long been rocked by seismic activity caused by the sometimes violent confrontation of tectonic plates, notably the Anatolian Block and the Arabian Plate, which collide along Asia Minor’s eastern boundary.

The morphology of the 1.2 meter (four-foot) long foreleg bone, found in 2002 in central Turkey’s Cankiri-Corum region near the village of Gozukizilli, is virtually identical to other finds from the same period in Pakistan, China and Mongolia.

Had Anatolia still been separated from the mainland by a body of water, the giant mammals would never have found their way onto Anatolian soil, argues the study, published in the Britain’s Zoological Journal of the Linnean Society.—AFP