Dozens of crania have been reconstructed and given archaeological identifiers. The genus is known from hundreds of find sites, mainly of cranial fragments and teeth, but in some cases nearly complete skeletons of post-cranial bones, scattered over Eurasia from Eastern Europe to China. sibiricum vindicated von Brandt, finding it to be the sister taxon to all living rhinoceroses, with an estimated divergence time of 47.4 million years ago, with a 95% highest posterior density of 41.9–53.2 Ma. A complete mitochondrial genome obtained from a specimen of E. In 1997, the McKenna/Bell classification considered Elasmotherium to be closely related to the wooly and modern rhinos, and placed it into the subfamily Rhinocerotinae. In 1877, German naturalist Johann Friedrich von Brandt placed it into the newly erected subfamily Elasmotheriinae, separate from modern rhinos. However, the specimen's exact origins are unknown. The genus name derives from Ancient Greek elasmos "laminated" and therion "beast" in reference to the laminated folding of the tooth enamel and the species name sibericus is probably a reference to the predominantly Siberian origin of princess Dashkova's collection. He first announced it at an 1808 presentation before the Moscow Society of Naturalists. sibiricumĮlasmotherium was first described in 1809 by German/Russian palaeontologist Gotthelf Fischer von Waldheim based on a left lower jaw, four molars, and the tooth root of the third premolar, which was gifted to Moscow University by princess Ekaterina Dashkova in 1807. Taxonomy The "Moscow mandible", holotype of E. Its legs were longer than those of other rhinos and were adapted for galloping, giving it a horse-like gait. Unlike any other rhinos and any other ungulates aside from some notoungulates, its high-crowned molars were ever-growing, and it was likely adapted for a grazing diet. Like all rhinoceroses, elasmotheres were herbivorous. However, no horn has ever been found, and other authors have conjectured that the horn was likely much smaller. sibiricum, sometimes called the Siberian unicorn, was the size of a mammoth and is often conjectured to have borne a single very large horn. The genus first appeared in the Late Miocene in present-day China, likely having evolved from Sinotherium, before spreading to the Pontic–Caspian steppe, the Caucasus and Central Asia. It was the last surviving member of Elasmotheriinae, a distinctive group of rhinoceroses separate from the group that contains living rhinoceros (Rhinocerotinae). Elasmotherium is an extinct genus of large rhinoceros endemic to Eurasia during Late Miocene through to the Late Pleistocene, with the youngest reliable dates around 39,000 years ago.
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