Woolly Rhino

Ancient Ice Age fossils:

Paleontologists have yet to fully trace the origins of many of the giant, hairy beasts that lived during the most recent ice age, which lasted from about 2.6 million to 10,000 years ago. Many of these animals, whose massive bodies conserved heat effectively, were thought to have evolved in Eurasia from animals that managed to survive and adapt to an increasingly cold environment.

...It was Wang who discovered a neck-bone fragment poking out of the ground one August afternoon in 2007. He had barely begun digging when his hammer hit the skull. He brushed away dirt, baring giant teeth.

Short on supplies and with just a few days left on the expedition, Wang and colleagues were faced with a dilemma. They could wait for their next trip to take the fossil home — but leaving it partially exposed would make it vulnerable to the elements.

Instead, the team decided to dig out the fossil as fast as they could. The scientists sped to the nearest hospital, about 60 miles away, and begged a doctor for plaster to protect the fragile specimen. Without the plaster to encase the bones, Wang said, the fossil "would have fallen apart into a thousand pieces before we got back into Beijing."

"The doctor was really gracious," Wang added. "We managed to convince him that this is a special case, that he will be able to make a big contribution to science."

Several months after a harrowingly bumpy ride back to Lhasa and then Beijing, the researchers realized the significance of their discovery: It was a new species of rhinoceros that had developed cold-hardy attributes at least a million years before the ice age got underway. The rhino, about 10% lighter than its ice age descendant, had a hairy body and a flattened horn useful for sweeping away snow to get at vegetation.