At https://www.livescience.com/animals/extinct-species/ancient-frosty-rhino-from-canadas-high-arctic-rewrites-what-scientists-thought-they-knew-about-the-north-atlantic-land-bridge … a long headline. The researchers have gained an insight into rhinoceros evolution and the longevity of the North Atlantic land bridge. This once existed, connecting Scotland with Greenland. in the Cretaceous – but for how long afterwards. It is now being suggested it survived for a very long time – on the basis of the discovery of ancient rhinoceros fossils in the high Arctic zone of Canada. The fossils themselves were discovered inside an impact crater. They are named after an Inuit [eskimo] word for ‘frosty’ – as in very cold. One of the fossils has bones in excellent condition, it is reported. It appears to be similar in size to modern Indian rhinoceros – living in a subtropical climatic zone. It died of unknown causes. About 75% of the skeleton is intact. It seems the bones were preserved in the impact crater by reason the crater was filled with water. It had become a lake over the years. However, the age of the sediments at the bottom of the lake is not mentioned. It is worth remembering, also, that upper Canada was a lot more warm back then than it is now. It woulld have lived in a temperate forest zone – in the Miocene or the Pliocene. Sea level changes could have caused the land bridge to be submerged, and again, allowed it to re-emerge millions of years later. Just in time to allow rhinoceros to migrate across it from Europe to the high Arctic.
The bones themselves were initially buried but Ice Age freeze and thaw changes allowed them to migrate nearer to the surface. They were eventually exposed – and explored. The Arctic rhino is now on the evolutionary tree of the rhinoceros family. It was most closely related to rhinos that lived in Europe around 23 million years ago, on the geological column. They lived in North America at the same time. How did they get from one to the other? It is suggested they travelled from Europe via the North Atlantic Land Bridge. It is not known when it disappeared. Some geologists think it might have survived down to just 2.7 million years ago, a remarkable admission if the expanding earth model is considered as a possibility. However, as the land bridge is currently submerged there is no way of telling. This is all very intriguing as we learnt earlier in the year that Eurasia and North America are still a single land mass. The Bering land bridge, although submerged, still connects the two pieces of continent. Where do plate tectonics come in? If the land bridge is still there, submerged, the whole of continental northern hemisphere is one single piece of the puzzle, a complete, world wide, land mass.