New fossils reveal one of the largest land mammals ever found — and it's a giant rhino - CBS News

About 25 million years ago, giant rhinos more than 16 feet tall roamed the Earth.

Paleontologists have now found fossils for a new, sixth species of the extinct giant rhino, Paraceratherium linxiaense, which are shedding light on how the animal moved across China, Mongolia, Kazakhstan and Pakistan.

The rare fossils, found in Gansu Province, China, located at the northeastern border of the Tibetan Plateau, date back to the Late Oligocene, an epoch that lasted from about 34 million years ago to about 23 million years ago. 

"The Tibetan region likely hosted some areas with low elevation, possibly under 2,000 meters during Oligocene, and the lineage of giant rhinos could have dispersed freely along the eastern coast of the Tethys Ocean and perhaps through some lowlands of this region," researchers wrote in the study. 

"Late Oligocene tropical conditions allowed the giant rhino to return northward to Central Asia, implying that the Tibetan region was still not uplifted as a high-elevation plateau," Deng said.