Dihoplus kirchbergensis

The Merck rhinoceros (Dihoplus kirchbergensis) is an extinct species of rhinoceros well known from the dozens of Pleistocene fossils found in large part of Eurasia, from Portugal to China. It is a browsing species typical of warm periods in this area, which migrated south during times when the glaciers advanced and with them species from cold climates such as the woolly rhinoceros. This animal belonged to the genus Dicerorhinus, of which only the Sumatran rhinoceros survives today, in serious danger of extinction, although the latest analyzes place it in the genus Dihoplus.

Natural history

The Merck rhinoceros (once known as Dicerorhinus merckii) lived in forest ecosystems with abundant water, where it fed on bushy plants and branches of low trees. To do this, it had a beaked lip similar to that of the African black rhinoceros. Like this animal, dietary specialization allowed the Merck rhinoceros to share habitat with another rhinoceros, in this case the steppe rhinoceros (Stephanorhinus hemitoechus), which fed preferentially on grasses, as the white rhinoceros does today in Africa.

This species was relegated to a few refuges in the Iberian Peninsula about 30,000 years ago, while it became extinct in other glacial refuges such as the Caucasus, the Balkans or the Italian Peninsula coinciding with the expansion of anatomically modern human beings, According to the first analyzes with high-resolution dating, due to unsustainable hunting by Homo sapiens. It was previously the occasional prey of Neanderthal man.