Uintatherium
Uintatherium, ("Beast of the Uinta Mountains") is an extinct genus of mammal that lived during the Eocene epoch, which includes a single species currently recognized, U. anceps. They were similar to rhinos today both in size and in shape, although they were not closely related. Their fossils are the largest and most impressive of the sites on the exavation of Fort Bridger in Wyoming , and were a focal point of the Bone Wars between Othniel Charles Marsh and Edward Drinker Cope. Fossils have been found in both Wyoming and in Utah near the Uinta Mountains, to which the animal owes its name. It appeared in the early Eocene 52 million years ago and lived in the region that is now the American Southwest. Their teeth were similar to the saber-toothed cat. It was a herbivore that fed on leaves, bushes, and grass.
Uintatherium was a large browsing animal, about the size of a rhinoceros. Its most unusual feature was the skull, which is both large and strongly built, but simultaneously flat and concave: this feature is rare and not regularly characteristic of any other known mammal except in some brontotheres. Its cranial cavity was exceptionally small due the walls of the cranium being exceedingly thick. The weight of the skull was mitigated by numerous sinuses permeating the walls of the cranium, like those in an elephant's skull.
Uintatherium
Uintatherium, ("Beast of the Uinta Mountains") is an extinct genus of mammal that lived during the Eocene epoch, which includes a single species currently recognized, U. anceps. They were similar to rhinos today both in size and in shape, although they were not closely related. Their fossils are the largest and most impressive of the sites on the exavation of Fort Bridger in Wyoming , and were a focal point of the Bone Wars between Othniel Charles Marsh and Edward Drinker Cope. Fossils have been found in both Wyoming and in Utah near the Uinta Mountains, to which the animal owes its name. It appeared in the early Eocene 52 million years ago and lived in the region that is now the American Southwest. Their teeth were similar to the saber-toothed cat. It was a herbivore that fed on leaves, bushes, and grass.
Uintatherium was a large browsing animal, about the size of a rhinoceros. Its most unusual feature was the skull, which is both large and strongly built, but simultaneously flat and concave: this feature is rare and not regularly characteristic of any other known mammal except in some brontotheres. Its cranial cavity was exceptionally small due the walls of the cranium being exceedingly thick. The weight of the skull was mitigated by numerous sinuses permeating the walls of the cranium, like those in an elephant's skull.