Baluchitherium
|
? Baluchitherium Conservation status: Fossil
|
|||||||||||||||||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
 |
|||||||||||||||||||
| Scientific classification | |||||||||||||||||||
|
|||||||||||||||||||
| Indricotherium transouralicum ( Pavlova, 1922) |
|||||||||||||||||||
|
|
Baluchitherium (Indricotherium transouralicum) was a gigantic hornless rhinoceros. It lived in Asia during the late Oligocene and early Miocene epoch of the Tertiary Period, 20-30 million years ago and went extinct 10 million years ago.
It is widely known by its synonym Baluchitherium grangeri ( Henry Fairfield Osborn, 1923) but the rules of scientific classification are that first publication takes priority, and the name Indricotherium is older.
There is some disagreement over whether this is the same animal as Paraceratherium, named by Forster Cooper in 1911. If it is then Indricotherium becomes a junior synonym for Paraceratherium. Lucas and Sorbus 1989 argue for synonymy, and consider that the differences between the two are of species level at most, and may even be the result of sexual dimorphism in a single species, with the larger more robust Indricotherium with larger incisors being probably the male, and the more gracile Paraceratherium the female. Others however have expressed doubts on this (concerning the interpretation of the shape of the skull). Even if these two do turn out to be distinct genera, they would still be very similar in size and appearance.
Indricotherium/Baluchitherium is believed to have been the largest land mammal ever to have lived. It stood 5.5 m (18 ft) high at the shoulders and was 9 m (30 ft) long. Its skull was about 2 m/6.6 ft in length, its limbs were long and massive, and it weighed about 20 tons. It was a herbivore that stripped leaves from trees with its down-pointing tusklike upper teeth that occluded forward-pointing lower teeth.
"Baluchitherium" means "beast from Baluchistan" in Pakistan, where fossils attributed to Paraceratherium have been discovered.
Indricotherium is named after a mythical Russian beast called the " indrik," considered the most powerful creature and the father of the animals.
These giant animals seem to have been limited to central Asia, for their fossils have not been found elsewhere.