{"id":100218,"date":"2026-02-04T11:01:18","date_gmt":"2026-02-04T16:01:18","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/carleton.ca\/news\/?post_type=cu_story&p=100218"},"modified":"2026-02-04T11:02:02","modified_gmt":"2026-02-04T16:02:02","slug":"arctic-rhino-fossil-nunavut","status":"publish","type":"cu_story","link":"https:\/\/carleton.ca\/news\/story\/arctic-rhino-fossil-nunavut\/","title":{"rendered":"Epiaceratherium Itjilik: The Rhino That Lived in the Arctic"},"content":{"rendered":"\n
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\n Epiaceratherium Itjilik: The Rhino That Lived in the Arctic\n <\/h1>\n \n <\/header>\n <\/div>\n\n \n <\/path>\n <\/path>\n <\/svg>\n <\/div>\n\n \n\n <\/div>\n<\/section>\n\n\n\n

Paleontologists at the Canadian Museum of Nature have recently been studying the skeletal remains of a rhinoceros. This might not sound remarkable at first, but what makes these remains fascinating is that they were found on Devon Island in the Canadian Arctic.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Today, mammals inhabit nearly every corner of the Earth. In Asia, Europe and North America, mammals arrived via three routes, one over the Bering Strait and two over the North Atlantic.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The Bering Land Bridge is the best known, having enabled the arrival of humans in North America approximately 20,000 years ago and shaped the population genetics of animals such as bears, lions<\/a> and horses<\/a>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Less well known are the two routes that traversed the North Atlantic, one from the Scandinavian Peninsula over Svalbard and Greenland, and another from Scotland over Iceland to Greenland and the Canadian Arctic.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

However, it has typically been thought that land animals could not have crossed the North Atlantic<\/a> by the Early Eocene<\/a>, a period around 50 million years ago when the Earth’s climate was warmer.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

However, the Arctic rhino’s remains provide tantalizing evidence that land mammals were able to traverse the North Atlantic using frozen land bridges much more recently than the Early Eocene.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

A rhinoceros in the Arctic<\/h2>\n\n\n\n
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