The eighth species is the Irish Elk, which lived from 1.6 million to 10,000 years ago. The Irish Elk in northern Eurasia looks more like a deer, but it is two meters tall and the width of its horns can be up to 4 meters.
, the largest antlers known to any deer species.
Unlike the horns of modern elk, the main part of the horns of Irish elk are thick plates, with a series of sharp protrusions extending out, known as antler tips.
The closest living relative currently is the European yellow deer, but the yellow deer is much smaller.
Such a big difference makes it difficult for geneticists to transplant the genetic structure of the Irish elk into the European yellow deer.
The ninth species is a very famous ferocious bird, which is the moa. The moa is a "ferocious bird" that even lions and tigers will stay away from. Its upper limbs have degenerated like the ostrich, but its body is fat and its lower limbs are
It is thick and short, so its running ability is far inferior to that of an ostrich.
The area where moa live (mainly in what is now New Zealand) is sparsely populated, has abundant food, and has no natural enemies. Only a few indigenous people hunt moa for food, but the original hunting methods of the indigenous people did not deal a fatal blow to the moa group.
Until the early 18th century, many moa were still thriving in New Zealand.
The extinction of the moa may be related to hunting and forest clearing by the Maori's Polynesian ancestors.
There are well-preserved moa bones in caves across New Zealand.
The close relative of the moa is the ostrich, but there are currently no examples of successful cloning of birds in the world. Therefore, if we want to resurrect the moa, we can only try to inject moa genes into ostrich eggs. Whether it can be successful remains to be studied.
The animal carcass Han Peacock bought this time was actually the carcass of a young woolly rhinoceros. It was found in the ice of Siberia. The carcass was very well preserved and even had hair. It was the second carcass discovered so far.
The carcass of a juvenile woolly rhinoceros.
With this discovery, perhaps the mysterious woolly rhinoceros will return to the world in the future.
The woolly rhinoceros is an extinct rhinoceros that has lived in northern Eurasia since 2 million years ago.
The woolly rhinoceros has a flat horn that can push away snow to graze, and a thick layer of fur and subcutaneous fat to keep warm in cold environments.
The woolly rhinoceros was hunted by early humans, which may have been the cause of its extinction. Just like the mammoth, there are many woolly rhinoceros samples hidden in the permafrost. After cleaning these tissues, there will be a large amount of nearly pure DNA.
Resurrecting a woolly rhinoceros is not difficult.
The average length of the woolly rhinoceros is 35 meters, the shoulder height is about 32 meters, and the average weight is 41 tons. It is about the same size as the existing Indian rhinoceros and smaller than the white rhino. It is so named because its whole body is covered with thick hair.
The woolly rhinoceros lived in the Pleistocene Epoch, the same era as the true mammoth, and survived through the Ice Age.
The woolly rhinoceros is active in northern Eurasia, living together with the giant rhinoceros Elascodon, which also belongs to the family Rhinoceridae.
Among the living rhinos, the closest relative to the woolly rhino is the Sumatran rhinoceros. They still exist in Southeast Asia, but they are a critically endangered species and are already on the verge of extinction.
The woolly rhinoceros was hunted by early humans, which may have been the cause of its extinction. Before the complete specimen was discovered in Poland, its shape was only known from cave paintings.
The Polish specimen is a female woolly rhinoceros, now on display in a museum in Krakow.
The woolly rhino's extinction date is only 10,000 years ago. It is the latest prehistoric rhinoceros to become extinct. Therefore, some woolly rhinoceros horns have been fortunately preserved because they are relatively recent or have been frozen. It has also become the only prehistoric horn fossil left.
Horned rhinoceros.
Rhinoceros horns are made of keratin and are very difficult to fossilize compared to the horns of deer or cattle and sheep. Due to freezing, some skin samples and hair samples have also been found.
During the 19th century, woolly rhino horns were often found in Russia, but because they were so strange-looking, many believed they were the claws of a giant bird.
Frozen carcasses of woolly rhinoceros have been found in Siberia from time to time. Although they often lack hair or horns, it was finally discovered that the two belong to the same thing.
These strange rhinoceros horns are very flat and look like wooden boards, but one side shows signs of wear as they move their heads from side to side on the ground, possibly to clear snow.
Remains of the woolly rhinoceros have been found across Europe, but they apparently failed to migrate to Ireland or North America.
They can also be seen in primitive cave paintings, one of which specifically depicts its color pattern, showing a band of darker fur around its waist.
Korean Peacock has a woolly rhinoceros horn in his hand. Judging from the huge horn, this woolly rhino is about 55 meters long and weighs up to 7 tons.
The rhinoceros horns of such a giant creature are not too small. The hairy rhinoceros horns taper upward from the bottom, are slightly curved, and vary in length. The Korean peacock is more than 70 centimeters long.
The surface is jet black, and the lower part is gradually lighter in color and is grey-brown. There are horse-tooth serrations around the bottom, called "horse-tooth edges", about 3 cm high, and the surface is uneven.
There are vertical lines and clear hard straight thorns from the top to the middle of the "horse tooth edge", which are commonly called "bristle", and sometimes there are cracks.
The middle part gradually becomes smooth upward, the tip of the horn is blunt and shiny, and bristle eye-like dots can be seen.
There is a longitudinal groove in front of the corner. The groove is about 9 to 15 cm long and 3 cm deep. It is commonly called "gutter". There is a protruding high hill on the chassis opposite to it. The hill is about 6 to 7 cm long and 2 meters high.
~4 cm, commonly known as "digang".
The chassis is larger, oblong, narrow in front and wide in back, shaped like a turtle's back, 13 to 20 cm long and 11 to 14 cm wide, gray-black or dark brown, gradually becoming lighter outward, gray-brown or gray-yellow, with the bottom surface
It is concave by 3 to 6 centimeters, which is commonly called "nest", and is covered with bristle eye-like dots, which is commonly known as "sand bottom".
The horn is hard, but it is split longitudinally and is made of straight silk without twisting.
The pound pieces are off-white, with sesame spots or short threads.
The smell is slightly fragrant but not fishy, the taste is slightly salty, the color is black and shiny, complete without cracks, the sandy background is gray-black, the mane is large, and the smell is fragrant. It can be said to be a perfect furry rhinoceros horn. Korean Peacock bought this one at that time
Woolly rhinoceros horns cost a lot of money.
There are currently very few woolly rhinoceros horns that have been preserved and can be used to make carvings. They are generally fossilized. Only those unearthed from the Siberian permafrost are basically well preserved. Among them, grade A horns cost between 500 yuan and 1,000 yuan.
It costs about 1 yuan per gram. Generally, materials cost about 200 yuan per gram. Fossil materials are much cheaper.
So after knowing that the baby rhinoceros he bought was a woolly rhinoceros, Han Peacock was even more happy. As long as the rhino horns are preserved, the value is not low.
For example, the hairy rhinoceros horn purchased by Han Peacock weighs three kilograms, which is 1,000 yuan per gram, and is worth up to 3 million yuan.
At that time, Huangshan and others agreed that Han Kongque had been fooled because they knew that there were many woolly rhinoceros horns selling in the market, especially woolly rhinoceros horn products, which were definitely not that expensive.
But will Han Peacock be fooled?
Of course, that woolly rhinoceros horn is incomparable to the carcass that Han Peacock bought, and the price of a whole woolly rhinoceros is completely incomparable to the price of one rhino horn.
Korean peacocks like to collect, and every time they encounter something that they don't have, they want to collect a large number of them, and rhinoceros horns are one of the few things that Korean peacocks cannot collect.
Therefore, Korean Peacock naturally prefers woolly rhinos to mammoths, because if there is technology to resurrect mammoths, then with the body of this woolly rhinoceros, Korean Peacock can resurrect woolly rhinoceros.
Of course, many rhinos of the same era as the woolly rhinoceros are currently on the verge of extinction, so resurrecting the woolly rhinoceros is not a top priority.
However, this does not mean that resurrecting the woolly rhino has no value. No matter what time it is, rhinos are rare animals and their horns are valuable medicinal materials.
Our country has listed rhinos as rare treasures more than 2,000 years ago, and rhinoceros horns are one of the eight Taoist treasures of the Han Dynasty.
In the past ten years, the price of rhino horn carvings has skyrocketed during the Ming and Qing Dynasties. There are reports of new rhino horn carving price records every season every year. At the same time, new antique rhino horn carvings and counterfeit rhino horn carvings have also been released, flooding the market and deceiving many collectors.
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Many of them are selling woolly rhinoceros horns, some pretending to be Sumatran rhinoceros horns, and some selling them as cheap substitutes for wide horns. In fact, Han Peacock just wants to say one thing:
Do you really know how many woolly rhino species are found and how easy it is to preserve horn products?
Rhino horns are very different from antelope horns, which means they are not easy to preserve!
So after confirming the horn of a woolly rhinoceros, which cost one million, Han Peacock bought it almost without any counter-offer.
This is mainly because it is protein! It is protein! It is protein! If you look up protein, you will know how many insects and animals in the world can be eaten.
Therefore, even if the woolly rhinoceros dies, its horns will be difficult to preserve.
Besides, although the woolly rhinoceros lives in alpine areas, the reasons for its extinction are completely different from those of the mammoth!
A large part of the reason why woolly rhino horns are extinct is because of the slaughter of our ancient ancestors! Yes, our ancestors ate this stuff, which also represents the hope that woolly rhino horns can be preserved as fossils and frozen specimens
Very slim!
It is very different from mammoths. It was once in the food chain of ancient humans! Just like you eat pork today!
Therefore, there are very few semi-fossils and frozen specimens of Woolly Rhinoceros! Extremely rare!
You only need to look at how many batches of frozen woolly rhinoceros specimens have been found around the world to know this. These things are not artificially raised. If you kill one batch, there will be another batch.
So for those people who sell batches of woolly rhinoceros horns in the market every day, what do you want archaeologists to think? How do you want ancient ancestors to think about it? What do you think about woolly rhino horns?
Those who sell batches of fur have never contacted Han Peacock, so Han Peacock does not know the specific characteristics of the furry rhinoceros horns they sell. However, Han Peacock seriously suspects that these guys selling furry rhinoceros horns are fake. (To be continued.)