Giant Woolly Rhino Horn Found: Record Length & Ancient Insights

Jake Buehler is a freelance science author, covering natural history, wildlife conservation and Planet’s fantastic biodiversity, from salamanders to sequoias. He has a master’s level in zoology from the College of Hawaii at Manoa.

Record-Breaking Horn Discovery

The horn– located protected in Siberian ice– stretched over 1.6 meters, virtually the dimension of a little grown-up human and a complete 30 centimeters much longer than the previous record holder, researchers report September 12 in the Journal of Zoology.

A regional hunter and fisherman found the horn and full skull along a small tributary of Russia’s Kolyma River. He sent out the remains to the Mammoth Museum in Yakutsk for examination by scientists. Icy lemmings located near the rhinocerous remains were sent to Novosibirsk for carbon dating and revealed the remains are about 19,600 years of ages.

Insights into Ancient Environments

Luca Pandolfi, a paleontologist at the University of Pisa in Italy not included with this research study, wonders if woolly rhinocerous horns can give any type of insights to ancient environment modifications. It would be interesting to know, he claims, if environment could affect horn qualities, and if chillier winters months left detectable signals in the horns’ growth banding.

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When she died, the rhinocerous was likewise rather old. Rhinocerous horns expand from their base, depositing layers of keratin that alternate between dark and light bands according to seasonal fluctuations, likewise to tree rings. The team counted these layers and figured out the rhinocerous lived at the very least 40 years, the earliest woolly rhino yet found. This is a few years older than the optimum age of modern-day wild rhinos, and similar to the earliest restricted rhinocerouses.

Length is measured along the front contour of the horn, so straighter horns may show up fairly longer than they truly are. Length is measured along the front curve of the horn, so straighter horns may appear relatively longer than they really are. Use on the front of the woolly rhinocerouses’ horns checked out in the research extended almost half the breadth of the base, states Gennady Boeskorov, a paleontologist at the Diamond and Precious Metals Geology Institute in Yakutsk.

Woolly rhinocerouses (Coelodonta antiquitatis) were related to modern rhinocerous varieties, last sharing a typical forefather with the Sumatran rhinocerous regarding 9 million years earlier. The old horn is longer than those of any type of modern rhino varieties, state Ruslan Belyaev, a vertebrate zoologist at the A.N. Severtsov Institute of Ecology and Development in Moscow, and his colleagues.

Yet the gigantic horn didn’t come from a particularly huge person. The skull birthing the horn was proportionally tiny for an adult woolly rhino. The researchers assume it belonged to a lady, because among contemporary rhino varieties, males are normally larger than females. Male woolly rhinos show up to have actually had thicker horns. The longest horns may have belonged to females, as is the case in contemporary rhinos from Africa. It’s unclear if the longer horns in female woolly rhinocerouses result from faster growth or slower wear, Belyaev states.

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Horn Length and Rhino Survival

The size of the horn might have been especially important for woolly rhinocerouses’ survival. Unlike contemporary rhinos, they’re thought to have utilized the unusually squashed, saberlike horn to brush away snow when feeding. Wear on the front of the woolly rhinocerouses’ horns checked out in the research extended nearly half the breadth of the base, says Gennady Boeskorov, a paleontologist at the Diamond and Valuable Metals Geology Institute in Yakutsk.

The head bearing the horn was proportionally tiny for an adult woolly rhinocerous. It’s vague if the longer horns in women woolly rhinocerouses are due to faster growth or slower wear, Belyaev claims.

This picture portrays the lengthiest horns for diverse extinct and contemporary rhino species, in order of longest to shortest. Size is determined along the front curve of the horn, so straighter horns may appear fairly longer than they truly are. The populated lines describe the animals’ smaller sized additional horns (academic in the case of the woolly rhinocerous). From delegated right: Woolly rhinoceros, white rhinoceros, black rhinoceros, Sumatran rhinoceros, higher one-horned rhinoceros.G.G. Boeskorov et al./ Journal of Zoology 2025This image illustrates the longest horns for diverse vanished and modern rhinocerous types, in order of lengthiest to shortest. Size is determined along the front contour of the horn, so straighter horns might appear reasonably longer than they really are. The dotted lines lay out the animals’ smaller secondary horns (theoretical when it comes to the woolly rhinocerous). From delegated right: Woolly rhinoceros, white rhinoceros, black rhinoceros, Sumatran rhinoceros, greater one-horned rhinoceros.G.G. Boeskorov et al./ Journal of Zoology 2025