Woolly rhinoceros skull Coelodonta antiquitatis Late... Lot 6

Woolly rhinoceros skull Coelodonta antiquitatis Late Pleistocene Dnieper River, Kamianske, Ukraine Complete of lower jaw, horns reconstructed in resin H. 44 in - L. 13 ¾ in Coelodonta antiquitatis, known as woolly rhinoceros, is an extinct species living throughout Europe and Asia during the Pleistocene, which survived until the end of the last glacial period, wandering undisturbed in the mammoth steppe, a vast and open landscape covered with wide expanses of grass and shrubs, protected from the rigors of cold by thick fur. Characteristic, in addition to a smaller hind horn located between the eyes, is the long, massive keratin front horn, stretched forward and supported by a powerful hump above the shoulders, a reserve of fat essential for survival during the dreary steppe winters. The horn reached at least a meter in length, up to 1.4 meters, and its weight the 15 kilograms. Woolly rhinos may have used their horns for fighting, probably even in intraspecific combat, as illustrated in cave paintings, and to move snow so they could uncover vegetation during winter. The native peoples of Siberia believed that their horns were the claws of giant birds. These interesting structures are unfortunately hardly preserved in the fossil record, therefore the need for reconstruction with resin models. A rhinoceros skull was found in Klagenfurt, Austria, in 1335 and was believed to be that of a dragon, then in 1772, naturalist Peter Simon Pallas during one of his expeditions to Siberia acquired a rhinoceros head and two legs from the people of Irkutsk and named the species Rhinoceros lenenesis (after the Lena River). German physician and naturalist Gotthilf Heinrich von Schubert, in the early 1800s, claimed the horns were the claws of giant birds and classified the animal as Gryphus antiquitatis, meaning "griffon vulture of antiquity." In Chauvet Cave in the Ardèche in France, the oldest example of prehistoric art in the world, there are numerous paintings and engravings of woolly rhinos illustrated with their distinctive features, raised back and hump, low head, short ears and relatively short tails so as to minimize heat loss. At Creswell Crags in England, a woolly rhinoceros rib was found with an engraved figure of a Late Paleolithic man, the Pinhole Cave Man, while at the site of Dolní Věstonice, Moravia more than seven hundred animal figurines have been found, many of them of woolly rhinos. A 13,300-year-old spear with a tip made of rhino horn has been found on Bolshoy Lyakhovsky Island, the farthest north in which a human artifact has ever been found.