Coelodonta antiquitatis

This skeleton belongs to a woolly rhinoceros, with a characteristic ossified nasal septum, that lived on the cold steppes of Eurasia.

Like its contemporary, the woolly mammoth, this species had a thick coat of hair on its skin which has been found preserved on bodies dug up from the frozen soils of Siberia and from the ozokerite (a kind of fossil wax or paraffin) mines of Galicia (Poland-Ukraine). Measuring 1.6 to 2 meters high at the shoulder, 3.5 meters long and weighing 2 to 3 tonnes, the woolly rhinoceros was a little larger than the African white rhinoceros. It had two horns, the front-most reaching a length of up to 1 m.

This specimen was discovered by two Jesuit priests, Émile Licent and Pierre Teilhard de Chardin, at Sjara-Osso-Gol (Salawusu) in the Ordos region of Inner Mongolia (present-day China).

The onager skeleton placed in the herd of equids was found in the same deposit by the same discoverers.

Excavated by P. Teilhard de Chardin and E. Licent