A wild and woolly discovery: FSU scientist's Tibetan expedition ends with prehistoric find

Florida State University ^ | September 16, 2011 | Unknown

[decimon]

Geochemistry Professor Yang Wang and an international team of researchers uncover oldest known species of woolly rhino

Yang Wang is known for conducting complex research using highly sophisticated equipment. Yet the Florida State University geochemist also has spent days hiking through the remote outback of Tibet and camping in the foothills of the Himalayas — all in the name of scientific discovery.

Because of that unique mix of skills, Wang was chosen to take part in a team of researchers that uncovered the oldest prehistoric woolly rhino ever found. A paper describing the team's discovery was just published in Science (http://www.sciencemag.org/), a prestigious journal established in 1880 by Thomas Edison. (An abstract of the paper is available here (http://www.sciencemag.org/content/333/6047/1285.abstract?sid=05f2e761-7871-408e-af12-ae87d43f6504); access to the full article requires a paid subscription.)

Wang and an international group of paleontologists set out in 2007 to explore one of the most isolated places on earth: the Zanda (ZAH-dah) Basin in Tibet, located at the feet of the Himalaya Mountains. The words majestic, wild and awesome all apply, yet fail to capture the landscape's natural wonder.

What drew the researchers to the basin wasn't its raw beauty, however. They came to explore its buried treasures. The largely untouched Zanda Basin is a fossil hunter's paradise, and the team was determined to make scientific breakthroughs.

They did just that, finding the complete skull and lower jaw of a previously unknown and long-extinct animal. They christened it the Tibetan woolly rhino (Coelodonta thibetana).

"This is the oldest, most primitive woolly rhino every found," Wang said of the team's discovery.

The ancient beast stood perhaps 6 feet tall and 12 to 14 feet long. It bore two great horns. One grew from the tip of its nose and was about 3 feet long. A much smaller horn arose from between its eyes. The Tibetan woolly rhino was stocky like today's rhino but had long, thick hair. It is often mentioned in the same breath with woolly mammoths, giant sloths and sabertooth cats, all giant mammals of the period that became extinct.

Prior to the team's discovery, the oldest woolly rhino ever found was 2.6 million years old, making it an inhabitant of the Pleistocene era (2.6 million years ago to 11,700 years ago). But the Tibetan woolly rhino found by the team is 3.7 million years old. That means it lived during the Pliocene epoch (5.3 million to 2.6 million years ago).

The new time frame also indicates that the Tibetan woolly rhino was alive before the last Ice Age. Wang examined the chemistry of the rhino's fossilized teeth using a special instrument, a mass spectrometer, at the National High Magnetic Field Laboratory (http://www.magnet.fsu.edu/) at Florida State.

"We look at the chemistry of the teeth and bones, to see what the animals ate and what kind of environment they lived in," said Wang, a professor in the university's Department of Earth, Ocean and Atmospheric Science (http://eoas.fsu.edu/).

Her detailed analysis revealed that the creature ate grasses that grew at high altitudes. That suggests, Wang said, that when the Ice Age arrived, the Tibetan woolly rhino adapted by moving from the mountains to lower altitudes.

The expedition team also found horse, elephant and deer fossils. Most of the fossils, including the Tibetan woolly rhino's complete skull, are being kept at the Chinese Academy of Sciences in Beijing, at its Institute of Vertebrate Paleontology and Paleoanthropology.

Wang and other members of the team, led by Xiaoming Wang, curator of the Natural History Museum of Los Angeles, plan to return to the basin again in the summer of 2012.

"Cold places, such as Tibet, the Arctic and the Antarctic, are where the most unexpected discoveries will be made in the future — these are the remaining frontiers that are still largely unexplored," said Xiaoming Wang.

[decimon]

Caption: This is Florida State University geochemist Yang Wang in Tibet.

Credit: Courtesy, Yang Wang.

Usage Restrictions: None

Caption: This is artist Julie Naylor's rendering of Tibetan woolly rhino.

Credit: Julie Naylor

Usage Restrictions: None

[decimon]

Yang Wang and the thang ping.

[JoeProBono]

[dog breath]

I wonder if the expedition got approval easier being comprised of researchers of Chinese descent. In any case, that was an outstanding bit of work.

[SWAMPSNIPER]

THIS IS A WOOLLY RINO

[dblshot]

There once was a young girl named Yang
Who had a problem that gave her a pang.
Where she was wooly.
To be satisfied fully
She searched though Tibet for a wang

OK sorry, it's Friday.

[Boogieman]

Well Matty told Hatty
About the thang she saw
It had two big horns
and a wooly jaw

Wooly Bully!

[JimRed]

The find consisted of fossilized bones, unlike the Siberian mammoth finds, which had flesh and skin with hair. How do they know it was woolly?

[SunkenCiv]

GGG managers are SunkenCiv, StayAt HomeMother & Ernest_at_the_Beach	join list or digest view topics view or post blog bookmark post a topic subscribe
Thanks decimon. Somehow I missed your ping. Anyway, great, this won't appear in, uh, yesterday's Digest, but is getting pinged now, and will be in #375. :') To all -- please ping me to other topics which are appropriate for the GGG list.

[AndyJackson]

It takes great powers of evasion to write at length of someone's deeds with no gender specific pronouns. When someone has the guts and get up and go to go digging in Tibet, that our hero is a she and not an it is not nothing. Here is a better picture of HER:

[blam]

[Bellflower]

They always tell us with such “assurance” how old these fossils are but fail to tell us how they came to the conclusion of it's supposed age. I for one would like to know.

[Bellflower]

Here is an article that says that they have found carcasses of woolly rhinos.

http://www.rhinos-irf.org/woolly/

"At Staruni in what is now the Ukraine, a complete carcass of a female Woolly Rhino was discovered buried in the mud. The combination of oil and salt prevented the remains from decomposing allowing the soft tissues to remain intact."

[decimon]

They always tell us with such “assurance” how old these fossils are but fail to tell us how they came to the conclusion of it's supposed age. I for one would like to know.

"The new time frame also indicates that the Tibetan woolly rhino was alive before the last Ice Age. Wang examined the chemistry of the rhino's fossilized teeth using a special instrument, a mass spectrometer, at the National High Magnetic Field Laboratory at Florida State."

http://www.fsu.edu/indexTOFStory.html?lead.rhino

"Another type of tandem mass spectrometry used for radiocarbon dating is Accelerator Mass Spectrometry (AMS), which uses very high voltages, usually in the mega-volt range, to accelerate negative ions into a type of tandem mass spectrometer."

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mass_spectrometry

[Bellflower]

They gleaned this estimate of time from a previous determined calculation as to when the ice age existed. Not everyone agrees about ice ages. It all depends on how the facts are interpreted and whose conclusions make the most sense.

http://creation.com/ice-age-questions-and-answers