rhinoceroses

• rhinoceroses

61:1.945,000,000 years ago the con­ti­nen­tal back­bones were el­e­vated in as­so­ci­a­tion with a very gen­eral sink­ing of the coast lines. Mam­malian life was evolv­ing rapidly. A small rep­til­ian, egg-lay­ing type of mam­mal flour­ished, and the an­ces­tors of the later kan­ga­roos roamed Aus­tralia. Soon there were small horses, fleet-footed rhinoceroses, tapirs with pro­boscises, prim­i­tive pigs, squir­rels, lemurs, opos­sums, and sev­eral tribes of mon­key­like an­i­mals. They were all small, prim­i­tive, and best suited to liv­ing among the forests of the moun­tain re­gions. A large os­trich­like land bird de­vel­oped to a height of ten feet and laid an egg nine by thir­teen inches. These were the an­ces­tors of the later gi­gan­tic pas­sen­ger birds that were so highly in­tel­li­gent, and that one­time trans­ported hu­man be­ings through the air.

• rhinoceroses

61:2.9The horse, an out­stand­ing ex­am­ple of evo­lu­tion, lived dur­ing these times in both North Amer­ica and Eu­rope, though his de­vel­op­ment was not fully com­pleted un­til the later ice age. While the rhinoceros fam­ily ap­peared at the close of this pe­riod, it un­der­went its great­est ex­pan­sion sub­se­quently. A small hog­like crea­ture also de­vel­oped which be­came the an­ces­tor of the many species of swine, pec­ca­ries, and hip­popota­muses. Camels and lla­mas had their ori­gin in North Amer­ica about the mid­dle of this pe­riod and over­ran the west­ern plains. Later, the lla­mas mi­grated to South Amer­ica, the camels to Eu­rope, and soon both were ex­tinct in North Amer­ica, though a few camels sur­vived up to the ice age.

• rhinoceroses

61:3.420,000,000 years ago was in­deed the golden age of mam­mals. The Bering Strait land bridge was up, and many groups of an­i­mals mi­grated to North Amer­ica from Asia, in­clud­ing the four-tusked mastodons, short-legged rhinoceroses, and many va­ri­eties of the cat fam­ily.

61:3.5The first deer ap­peared, and North Amer­ica was soon over­run by ru­mi­nants—deer, oxen, camels, bi­son, and sev­eral species of rhinoceroses—but the gi­ant pigs, more than six feet tall, be­came ex­tinct.

• rhinoceroses

61:4.3For a short time all the land of the world was again joined ex­cept­ing Aus­tralia, and the last great world-wide an­i­mal mi­gra­tion took place. North Amer­ica was con­nected with both South Amer­ica and Asia, and there was a free ex­change of an­i­mal life. Asi­atic sloths, ar­madil­los, an­telopes, and bears en­tered North Amer­ica, while North Amer­i­can camels went to China. Rhinoceroses mi­grated over the whole world ex­cept Aus­tralia and South Amer­ica, but they were ex­tinct in the West­ern Hemi­sphere by the close of this pe­riod.

• rhinoceroses

64:4.7Mam­malian life had been lit­tle changed by the great glacier. These an­i­mals per­sisted in that nar­row belt of land ly­ing be­tween the ice and the Alps and, upon the re­treat of the glacier, again rapidly spread out over all Eu­rope. There ar­rived from Africa, over the Si­cil­ian land bridge, straight-tusked ele­phants, broad-nosed rhinoceroses, hye­nas, and African li­ons, and these new an­i­mals vir­tu­ally ex­ter­mi­nated the saber-toothed tigers and the hip­popota­muses.