4.6" Fossil Rhino (Stephanorhinus) Atlas Vertebra - Germany

Fossil Rhino (Stephanorhinus) Atlas Vertebra - Germany #111863

This is a 4.6" wide vertebrae of Stephanorhinus etruscus, an extinct Rhinoceros. This specimen is in good condition with processes intact. Some compact bone is missing, revealing the marrow structure of the bone. Note the very large vertebral foramen. This bone is likely from a young individual.

It's Pleistocene in age or approximately eight hundred thousand years old and comes from the gravel deposits of the Rhine River. Fossils of Stephanorhinus are much rarer than those of the Woolly Rhinoceros (Coelodonta).

It comes with a display stand.

The gravel deposits along the Rhine River used to produce a large number of Pleistocene fossils while miners quarried for gravel aggregate. They have become much harder to come by in recent years as the quarry operations have become more mechanized, often destroying fossils in the process.

Stephanorhinus, or Merck's rhinoceros, is an extinct genus of rhinoceros native to northern Eurasia that lived during the Lower to Early Late Pleistocene epoch. It had two horns and was a relatively large rhino. It weighed over 3,000 kilograms (6,600 pounds) and measured about 2 meters (6.56 feet) tall and 4 meters (13.12 feet) in length, similar to a modern white rhino.