According to the present results, there are three, possibly four," says co-author Professor Nikolai Spassov of the Bulgarian Academy of Sciences. "This changes our understanding about the chilothere group, which was previously thought to contain only two genera. The authors of the study even assume that two other species from China, which, like Eochilotherium samium, were previously included in the genus Chilotherium, are actually more closely related to Eochilotherium or may even represent another genus. student and first author of the publication, therefore searched for new evidence, traveling to various European museums. This made the identification of the two species difficult. The original fossils of two chilothere species, Chilotherium schlosseri and Eochilotherium samium-so called holotypes-were destroyed during the Second World War. Five million years ago at the latest, chilotheres became extinct in Europe and a little later also in Asia, probably also because of changed climatic conditions. They had tusk-like incisors and grazed in open landscapes. They were smaller than today's species and with extremely short legs were probably not as eager to run as today's rhinos. They lived in Asia as well as in Eastern and Southeastern Europe. Hornless rhinos were perhaps the most diverse group of the entire family and one of the most species-rich genera is known as Chilotherium. In the 40-million-year-old evolutionary history of large herbivores, there have been numerous species that have gone extinct, including many without horns. Three of the five species are currently threatened with extinction. Today's rhinos bear the characteristic horns on their nose and/or forehead and live Africa and Asia. Panagiotis Kampouridis of the Senckenberg Center for Human Evolution and Paleoenvironment at the University of Tübingen re-examined the fossil skulls of hornless rhinos. An international research team from Germany, Greece, Bulgaria and South Africa shows, in the Journal of Vertebrate Paleontology, that these animals were more diverse than previously thought.
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