All posts tagged: Rhinoceros

14,000-year-old woolly rhinoceros DNA extracted from wolf’s stomach

14,000-year-old woolly rhinoceros DNA extracted from wolf’s stomach

Get the Popular Science daily newsletter💡 Breakthroughs, discoveries, and DIY tips sent six days a week. Towards the end of the last ice age, an ancient wolf feasted on a young woolly rhinoceros (Coelodonta antiquitatis). When the wolf died, it ended up buried in Siberian permafrost for about 14,000 years until it was uncovered by paleontologists in 2015. Luckily for scientists, some woolly rhinoceros tissue remained inside of the wolf’s stomach. Now, these genetic detectives analyzed the woolly rhino’s genome and found that the species likely went extinct due to rapid population collapse and not a slow decline as Earth’s climate warmed. The findings are detailed in a study published today in the journal Genome Biology and Evolution. “Sequencing the entire genome of an Ice Age animal found in the stomach of another animal has never been done before,” Camilo Chacón-Duque, a study co-author and paleogenomicist at Stockholm University in Sweden, said in a statement. “Recovering genomes from individuals that lived right before extinction is challenging, but it can provide important clues on what caused …

Tiny Deer Takes on 1.7-Ton Rhinoceros

Tiny Deer Takes on 1.7-Ton Rhinoceros

Animals in captivity can end up with some unusual neighbors —surprising encounters. In a naturalistic rendition of David vs. Goliath, a 28-pound Reeves’s muntjac named Tata, a small deer species native to Asia, took on Maruśka, a 1.7-ton female rhinoceros, in a fierce head-to-head at the Wroclaw Zoo in Poland. A video that’s gone viral on social media shows the miniature deer fiercely standing its ground and charging at the far more massive rhino, clashing into its horn-tipped snout with tiny antlers. At first, the rhino appears to be amused, waving its head around. But by the end of the video, it’s clear who won the confrontation: the muntjac. 🦌 🦏 Tiny 13kg deer takes on 1.7-tonne rhino at Wroclaw Zoo A case of David vs Goliath at Wroclaw Zoo, as a tiny 13kg deer takes on a nearly two-tonne rhinoceros and appears to come out of the clash on top. pic.twitter.com/aKFpwP8VJd — AFP News Agency (@AFP) January 9, 2026 In a post on Facebook, the zoo joked in Polish that “someone probably forgot to …