During the Paleocene, many of the major modern mammal groups familiar to us today emerged after the KPG mass extinction. One such lineage were the Perissodactyls, the so called odd toed ungulates. Only three families have survived into modern times, with these being the horses, tapirs and the subject of today’s video, the rhinos. Basal members of all three of these groups would have looked very similar in life, being small forest dwelling browsers that would have resembled trunkless tapirs. The first Rhinocerotoids were dogsized agile animals such as Hyrachyus, while the gracile Hyracodontids were successful ponylike runners that thrived in the Eocene and Oligocene.

Meanwhile, the Amynodontids were larger and bulkier; some forms were tapirlike and possessed short trunks, while genera such as Metamynodon were semiaquatic and superficially resembled modern hippos. The largest of all these early Rhinoceratoids were the Paraceratheriids, which filled a high browsing niche similar to giraffes or sauropod dinosaurs. Basal Eocene forms reached the size of horses, while Oligocene genera became truly enormous. The successful Paraceratherium was among the most massive terrestrial mammals of all time, weighing between 1520 tonnes. All of these groups died out by the end of the Oligocene, due to a combination of climate change and competition with Proboscideans, leaving only the more familiar Rhinocerotids to persist into the Miocene and beyond.

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