When Rhinos, Giraffes Walked the Green Expanse of the Kutch
A recently-published analysis of 14 million-year old fossils in Gujarat’s Kutch desert indicates that the now-arid region was once a green expanse harbouring different kinds of life: fishes, reptiles, birds and mammals--including, possibly, ancient giraffes and rhinoceros.
Published in the journal Historical Biology
Since 2007, the authors of the present study have recovered vertebrate fossil specimens belonging to fishes, reptiles, mammals (marine and terrestrial) and birds. This includes remains of teeth, ribs and bones. While the marine mammals’ remains show types of fish and sea cows, the terrestrial (land-based) mammal fossils indicate the presence of ‘a long-limbed rhinocerotid’ (a member of the rhinoceros family) as well as unidentified species of suidae (boar/pig family), bovidae (buffalo/cow family) and giraffidae (members of the giraffe family). The authors have clarified that the bovid and giraffid remains warrant further, detailed investigations.
The fossils analysed in the current study represent terrestrial mammals from six identified genera (taxonomic ranks used in biological classification of living and fossil organisms). The genera are Sanitherium, Sivameryx, Brachypotherium, Zygolophodon, Gomphotherium , and Deinotherium .
The study, ‘A Middle Miocene (~14 Ma) vertebrate assemblage from Palasava, Rapar Taluka, Kutch (Kachchh) District, Gujarat State, western India ’, was authored by Vivesh V Kapur, Martin Pickford, Gaurav Chauhan and M.G. Thakkar.
In November 2018, another team of scientists found the remains of a 11-million year old hominid (ape) in the Kutch basin. Dubbed Sivapithecus , it was the first Miocene ape fossil found so far south in the Indian peninsula, and indicated that the range of the apes was much larger than earlier thought.
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