http://www.latimes.com/news/science/la-sci-woolly-rhino-20110903,0,175984.story
...............”Several months after a harrowingly bumpy ride back to Lhasa and then Beijing, the researchers realized the significance of their discovery: It was a new species of rhinoceros that had developed cold-hardy attributes at least a million years before the ice age got underway. The rhino, about 10% lighter than its ice age descendant, had a hairy body and a flattened horn useful for sweeping away snow to get at vegetation.
The team also found other creatures — blue sheep, snow leopards and Tibetan antelope — that had acquired similarly snow-ready qualities. Perhaps this part of Tibet had been a specialized breeding ground for cold-tolerant animals that were able to thrive and spread once the big freeze hit. It will take more digging to find out.
“This is just the first shot across the bow in terms of possible evidence of preadaptations to cold climates,” said Donald Prothero, a mammalian paleontologist at Occidental College. “It’s possible that quite a few more of these major ice age groups will turn out to be from Tibet. We’ll see when they get more specimens.” [end]
I see — artist’s depiction of this now extinct wooly rhinoceros. From the description of the dig, it had already decomposed down to only a bare skeleton, so who knows what color its coat was. Occasionally a fossil hunter in frigid climes is lucky enough to discover an entire critter encased in ice looking much as it did when alive.