Tandem-horned rhino from the Late Miocene of northwestern China reveals origin of the unicorn Elasmothere
Transition of a nasal horn to a frontal horn in elasmotheres has been difficult to explain, because a major transformational gap exists between nasal-horned ancestors and frontal-horned descendants. In a paper published in May 2013 in the journal of Chinese Science Bulletin (Vol. 58, No. 15), Dr. DENG Tao from the Institute of Vertebrate Paleontology and Paleoanthropology (IVPP), Chinese Academy of Sciences, and his colleagues reported the first discovered skull of Sinotherium lagrelii from the Late Miocene red clays with an age of about 7 Ma in the Linxia Basin, northwestern China. This skull has an enormous nasofrontal horn boss shifted posteriorly and a smaller frontal horn boss, which are connected to each other, providing new evidence on the origin of the giant unicorn Elasmotherium.