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Rhinoceros fossils found in Pakistan
Fossilised remains of rhinoceros — a short, thick-limbed mammal — have been found in various parts of Pakistan mainly in two- to 23-million-year-old continental rocks. These rocks are exposed in: Bugti Hills, Balochistan; Potwar plateau; Pabbi Hills, Punjab; Gaj and Sehwan, Sindh and in some areas south of Mirpur, Azad Kashmir.
Several hundred specimens, representing various genera, have been collected from these areas by the Geological Survey of Pakistan, in collaboration with the Yale and Howard universities of the United States. The collected fossils include those of Balochitherium, Darcatherium, Gandatherium, and Brachypotherium.
Fossils similar to the ones found in Pakistan have been found also in India, Burma, Kazakhstan and Mongolia. The oldest and the youngest rhinoceros fossils in Pakistan are reported to have been found from the Bugti Hills and Pabbi Hills, respectively.
The world’s largest rhinoceros which is extinct now — Balochitherium — has not just been found from Pakistan but also from Mongolia, Central Asia. It was in 1908 when the fossils of this animal were first found in Bugti Hills by G.E. Pilgrim.
French and Pakistani teams, in collaboration with the Pakistan Museum of Natural History, found the fossils of Balochitherium in the late 1990s. It was the largest of all land mammals, its height reaching 18 feet at the shoulders.
The animal had a long neck and pillar-like limbs. Its skull — about four feet in length — was quite small in proportion to its massive body.
The youngest fossil rhinoceros came from approximately 2-million-year-old sediments exposed in the Pabbi Hills in Punjab. Geologically, the discovery of such fossils is of significance as it indicates that the area hosting the animal was swampy and grassy, having shallow bodies of water suitable for rhinoceros. Fossils of rhinoceros collected from Pakistan can be seen at the Pakistan Museum of Natural History, Islamabad, and the Geological Survey of Pakistan offices in Quetta.
The word “rhinoceros” is a combination of two Greek words — “rhin” and “keras”. “Rhin” means “nose” and “keras” stands for “horn”. The two words combined mean an animal with one or two horns on its nose.
The creature is mainly characterised by a bulky body, short legs, a massive head, one or two horns, and a short neck. It is one of the largest odd-toed ungulates having wrinkled skin which is sparsely covered with hair.
Each of the four feet has three toes — middle toes being larger than the other two. The eyes of the rhinoceros are small and ears short as compared to its body. Rhinoceroses are of different sizes — length ranging from 2 to 2.2 metres while the height could reach 1 to 2 metres at the shoulders, although the female rhinoceros is smaller in size.
The weight of an adult rhinoceros is between 1 and 4 tons. The horn(s) of some rhinoceros, though solid, are short. They are composed of fused hair and are present on the tip of the nose. Some rhinoceroses use these horns to break down small trees.
Rhinoceroses from India and Java bear a single horn on the nasal bones. Dicerohinus from Sumatra and Borneo is a two-horned rhinoceros and the horns are placed one behind the other. Diceratheriuar — an American Miocene genus male which existed some 24 million years ago — possessed small horns placed side by side at the tip of the nose. However, the horns were not present in all extinct species.
The Balochitherium and Aceratherium of early Miocene of Asia slept in both standing and recumbent positions and were fond of rolling about in muddy pools and sandy riverbeds. Although they possessed poor vision, they had well developed senses of smell and hearing.
The female gestation period of rhinoceros is between 420 and 570 days. A single baby rhino (calf) after birth remains with the mother until the birth of the next one. The newborn is active soon after birth. The rhino can live for up to 50 years.
The rhinoceros aptly has no enemy other than humans, who use the mammal’s body parts in folk medicine. Therefore, we have lost a very large part of the rhinoceros population through hunting. Nearly all the genera of the Rhinoceratidae — the only family of rhinoceros — are under the threat of extinction.
Rhinoceroses with four living genera are inhabitants of major parts of Africa, south of Sahara and, Central and Southern Asia. African rhinoceroses live more in open areas than the Asiatic ones. According to Walker (1983), Ceratotherium — the largest genus of rhinoceros in Africa — inhabited Southern Chad, Central Africa, Southwestern Sudan, Northeastern Zaire and Northeastern Uganda.
Two species of one-horned Asian rhinoceros are present in much of northern India, Nepal, Sikkim, Vietnam, and on the Malay Peninsula, Sumatra and Java. The presence of rhinoceros in Pakistan was well known to the people of the Indus Valley.
Babar, the great Mughal emperor, described in 1526 the hunting of rhinoceroses in the valleys near Peshawar.
The geological time range of rhinoceroses is Middle Eocene (45 million years ago) to recent in Asia including Pakistan, Miocene to recent in Africa, and late Eocene (40 million years ago) to Pliocene (13 million years ago) in North America.
They lived in swamps and grasslands near bodies of water. They were round- and broad-footed creatures and can be compared in size with the present day hippopotamus. These beasts, varied and abundant during most of the Cenozoic (65 million years ago to recent) time, ranged in size from the three-foot-tall North American Menoceras with two horns to the 18-foot-tall Asian extinct animal Balochitherim.
Rhinoceroses are divided into three families: Hyracodontidae, Amynodontidae, and Rhinicendidae. Hyracodontidae, known as running rhinoceroses, were common in North America in Oligocene (38 million years ago) period and in late Eocene in North America and Asia and were better adapted for cursorily life.
Amynodontidae, found in late Eocene and Oligocene of both Eurasia and America, persisted in Axis until Miocene. They were of the size of hippopotamus and were adapted for aquatic life.
Rhiniceratidae (early true rhinoceroses) became prominent in the Oligocene and tended to be of large size and had stout limbs. The more recent species retained three-toed feet.
The primitive Oligocene rhinoceros: Aceratherium, Miocene and Pliocene genus of Eurasia and America, were hornless although Diceratherium, American Miocene males, possessed small horns.
Giant rhinoceros, a spectacular and aberrant group, including Balochitherium and Indracotherium, from Oligocene and early Miocene of Asia had no horns.
Cohilodonta was the woolly rhinoceros of northern Eurasia, adapted to cold climate. Woolly rhinos have also been preserved in blocks of ice, but the best specimens of woolly rhinoceros were two young ones found together with a mammoth calf in Poland. They had been “pickled” by throwing them in an oil pit and were then preserved in the paraffin-like oil.
The writer is a retired deputy director of the Geological Survey of Pakistan
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