Embrithopoda

Arsinoitherium, drawing by Heinrich Harder

• North Africa, Asia, Eastern Europe

The Embrithopoda are an extinct group of mammals that lived during the Eocene and Early Oligocene. Her most famous representative is probably Arsinoitherium.

Features

Embrithopoda were externally rhino -like animals, although their horns were not made ​​of keratin, but from bone. Arsinoitherium had two horns side by side, there were also polled representatives. Her body was long and strong, the pillar-like legs, however briefly. Her skin was probably similar to that of today's elephants thick and hairless.

These animals are known from North Africa, Asia and Eastern Europe. Her teeth were relatively unspoilt and suggest a plant-based diet. Their habitat may have been mangroves or wetlands

System

The Embrithopoda be classified in the group of mammals of the Paenungulata, more precisely in the taxon of Tethytheria. Meanwhile living representatives are the elephants and manatees, which thus represent the closest relatives of Embrithopoda.

Until the 1970s, only finds from Fayyum in Egypt were known to later fossils in Mongolia, Turkey and Romania and most recently in 2004 have been discovered in Ethiopia.