Arctic fossil reveals previously unknown hornless rhinoceros' species

With 75% of its skeleton preserved in Devon Island’s Haughton Crater, the Miocene rhino shows the species crossed the North Atlantic land bridge much later than once thought, says lead author Fraser.

By Jerusalem Post Staff, October 29, 2025

https://www.jpost.com/science/article-872051

Artist's recreation of Epiatheracerium itjilik in its forested lake habitat, Devon Island.

(photo credit: Illustration: Julius Csotonyi)

Nature Ecology and Evolution published the first scientific description of Epiatheracerium itjilik, a small hornless rhinocerotid that lived in Canada’s High Arctic during the Early Miocene, about 23 million years ago. “The addition of this Arctic species to the rhino family tree now offers new insights to our understanding of their evolutionary history,” said Danielle Fraser, head of paleontology at the Canadian Museum of Nature, according to Popular Science.

About 75 percent of the skeleton was recovered from lake deposits inside the 23-kilometre-wide Haughton Impact Crater on Devon Island, Nunavut. The late Mary Dawson of the Carnegie Museum of Natural History first recognized the bones in 1986; they were prepared in Pittsburgh and later transferred to the Canadian Museum of Nature, where they are now curated.

Based on moderate cheek-tooth wear, the specimen represented an early- to mid-adult. It stood roughly one metre at the shoulder, lacked a horn, and had a narrow snout that pointed to shrub browsing. Pollen from the same strata indicated larch, willow, spruce, and birch forests around the crater lake, where warm summers gave way to snowy, dark winters. Fraser told CBC News she asked the illustrator “to make the rhino look like a pony in winter,” adding that the animal likely carried dense fur.

The species name comes from the Inuktitut word itjilik, meaning frosty, a choice reached after consultation with Inuit elder and former Grise Fiord mayor Jarloo Kiguktak. “The choice of the name is a recognition of the territory and Inuit culture, which for generations have preserved these extreme lands rich in natural history,” said Fraser, according to La Stampa. Permits were issued by the Government of Nunavut with the consent of the Qikiqtani Inuit Association, and field logistics were provided by the Polar Continental Shelf Program.

Most bones lay within an area of about five to seven square metres. Freeze-thaw cycles continue to expose fragments, allowing later expeditions led by Marisa Gilbert to collect additional material. “The remarkable thing about the Arctic rhinoceros is that the fossil bones are in excellent condition. They are three-dimensional and were only partially replaced by minerals,” said Gilbert, according to Scinexx.

Researchers extracted protein residues from the tooth enamel, extending by millions of years the window for retrieving evolutionary information from ancient proteins. “The findings open new avenues for the study of ancient proteins and their application to understanding mammal evolution,” wrote the study team, which included Natalia Rybczynski of the Canadian Museum of Nature and Carleton University. The work was funded by the Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council of Canada and the W. Garfield Weston Foundation.

Fraser’s group placed Epiatheracerium itjilik among 57 other rhinoceros species in an updated family tree and modeled the animals’ movements between Europe and North America. Their results suggested that the Arctic form and its close European relatives crossed a North Atlantic land bridge, possibly aided by seasonal ice, about 20 million years ago. “It’s always exciting and informative to describe a new species… the North Atlantic played a much more important role in their evolution than previously thought,” said Fraser, according to a press release published on EurekAlert. “At different periods in time… there may have actually been some ice there in winter that allowed them to cross,” she noted.

During the Miocene, Devon Island supported horses, camels, saber-toothed predators, and the walking seal ancestor Puijila darwini, yet Epiatheracerium itjilik remains the only large mammal recovered from Haughton Crater so far. “More broadly, this study reinforces that the Arctic continues to offer up new knowledge and discoveries that expand on our understanding of mammal diversification over time,” added Fraser.

Field teams plan to return to Devon Island with the backing of local Inuit authorities and federal and territorial agencies. “That’s pretty interesting and pretty exciting,” said Jaelyn Eberle of the University of Colorado Boulder.

Written with the help of a news-analysis system.