A DATABASE OF OLD WORLD NEOGENE AND QUATERNARY
RHINO-BEARING LOCALITIES

Denis Geraads¹, Esperanza Cerdeño², David García Fernandez³, Luca Pandolfi⁴, Emmanuel Billia⁵, Athanassios Athanassiou⁶, Ebru Albayrak⁷, Vlad Codrea8, Theodor Obada⁹, Tao Deng¹⁰, Haowen Tong¹⁰, Xiaokang Lu¹⁰, Štepán Pícha¹¹, Adrian Marciszak¹², Gordana Jovanovic¹³, Damien Becker¹⁴, Julia Zervanova¹⁵, Yasmina Chaïd Saoudi¹⁶, Anne-Marie Bacon¹⁷, Noémie Sévêque¹⁸, Rajeev Patnaik¹⁹, Jakub Brezina²⁰, Nikolaï Spassov²¹, Antigone Uzunidis²².

Affiliations

This database is intended to provide a list of all Neogene and Quaternary Old World localities that yielded fossils of Rhinocerotidae identified at least to genus. Its aim is mostly geographic, and it is not intended as a revision of fossil rhinos. It is probably close to exhaustive for western and central Europe (the major source being Guérin, 1980, with addition of the coordinates), but certainly imperfect for some other areas, because the fossil record is much less complete, or because the location of fossils sites is not published with enough precision (this is especially true of Russian sites). Still, further bibliographic research would certainly increase the sampling.

OCCURRENCES

For each site, we provide the list of published rhino taxa. In addition, a series of columns gives the number of species present in each genus and in each of the main groups (of course not everyone will agree on these subdivisions !):

• Aceratheriini (Aceratherium + Acerorhinus + Alicornops + Chilotherium + Hoploaceratherium + Mesaceratherium + Persiatherium + Plesiaceratherium + Protaceratherium + Shansirhinus + Pleuroceros + Subchilotherium)
• Rhinocerotini (Diceros + Ceratotherium + Dicerorhinus + Rhinoceros + Nesorhinus + Pliorhinus + Stephanorhinus + Coelodonta + Paradiceros + Rusingaceros + Lartetotherium + Dihoplus + Gaindatherium)
• brachypotheres (Brachypotherium + Prosantorhinus + Diaceratherium)
• Rhinocerotini + brachypotheres
• Rhinocerotinae (Aceratheriini + Rhinocerotini + brachypotheres)
• Elasmotheriinae (Begertherium + Beliajevina + Bugtirhinus + Caementodon + Elasmotherium + Hispanotherium + Huaqingtherium + Iranotherium + Kenyatherium + Ningxiatherium + Ougandatherium + Parelasmotherium + Shennongtherium + Sinotherium + Tesselodon + Turkanatherium + Chilotheridium + Victoriaceros)
• stem taxa (all others)

SYSTEMATICS

• we have not included those sites with Rhinocerotidae not identified at least to genus
• we have not tried to update previous identifications, although this was done in some cases
• for the sake of uniformity, we have homogenized the species names, and their attribution to genus. For instance, we use Stephanorhinus jeanvireti for all rhinos referred to S. elatus, and S. kirchbergensis, which is now generally used, for S. mercki (even though this might be incorrect). This choice is sometimes problematic (e.g., the type of Ceratotherium praecox belongs to Diceros, but most specimens assigned to this species are true Ceratotherium).
• for mapping purposes, we deleted the 'cf.'s and 'aff.'s; we are well aware that this is a questionable choice

COORDINATES