Paleontologists looked at the teeth Teleoce’s major – Found in an extinct species of nasal bacteria that lived in North America from 17.5 million to 5 million years ago. Ash falling fossil bed Nebraska, USA. Here, over 100 Teleoce’s major The individual in a single hole died and was buried in ashes from the eruption of Yellowstone’s superintendent.
Since discovering the rhinoceros at Nebraska’s Ashwood Fossil Bed State Park in 1971, researchers have wondered what attracted so many animals in the same location.
Did they converge from afar? Perhaps they sought shelter from natural disasters that unfolded volcanic eruptions with those asphyxiation ash?
“We found out they weren’t moving much,” said Clark Ward, a researcher at the University of Minnesota.
“We found no evidence of seasonal migration or disaster response.”
Ward and colleagues looked at the ratio of strontium, oxygen and carbon isotopes Teleoce’s major Teeth tracking long, operating animal movements across the landscape.
“By studying the carbon of animals, we can reconstruct the carbon of our environment and understand what kind of vegetation lived there,” Ward said.
“You can use it to reconstruct how wet and dry the environment is.”
“And strontium tells us where the animals are forged because isotopic ratios are associated with soil and supporting bedrock.”
Teleoce’s major It was a one-horned rhino with a barrel-shaped body and sturdy hippo-like legs. Like hippos, they ate grass.
And, like hippos, researchers believe that these rhinoceros have spent a lot of time in and around the water.
Due to their vast size, they had few predators during the Miocene era.
However, their calves would have been vulnerable to predators like hyenas, known as bone-breaking dogs.
In fact, some of the specimens found on the Nebraska site have evidence that the scavenger removed some of the bodies after its death. And ancient trucks from a 45 kg (100 pound) dog are found there.
The giant Yellowstone volcano has erupted many times over the past 12 million years.
“The ashes from the eruption traveled 1,127 km (700 miles) in what is now Nebraska, where they piled up in snow, like snow,” Ward said.
“But the ashes that were blown by the wind continued to fall into Nebraska, long after the first eruption.”
“The ashes would have covered everything: grass, leaves, water.”
“Reconstructing how we equip the ancient landscapes that have disappeared provides an important context for understanding their paleoecology and sociality, and the environment in which they lived,” the scientists concluded.
Their paper Published in the journal Scientific Report.
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CT Word et al. 2025. Enamel carbon, oxygen and strontium isotopes reveal limited mobility in extinct rhinoceros in Ashford Fossil Bed, Nebraska, USA. Sci Rep 15, 11651; doi:10.1038/s41598-025-94263-z
Source: www.sci.news
