Scientists describe an extinct rhinoceros species from the Canadian high arctic

Scientists at the Canadian Museum of Nature have announced the discovery and description of an extinct rhinoceros from the Canadian High Arctic. The nearly complete fossil skeleton of the new species was recovered from the fossil-rich lake deposits at Heaton Crater on Nunavut’s Devon Island and is the northernmost rhino species.

The rhinoceros has an evolutionary history that spans more than 40 million years, covering all continents except South America and Antarctica. The “Arctic Rhino” lived during the Early Miocene, about 23 million years ago, and is most closely related to other rhino species that flourished in Europe millions of years ago.

Scientific paper describing this new species [eet-jee-look]was published in the journal today Nature Ecology and Evolution.

“Today there are only five species of rhinoceros in Africa and Asia, but in the past they were found in Europe and North America, with more than 50 species known from the fossil record,” says lead author Dr. Daniel Fraser, head of paleobiology at the Canadian Museum of Nature (CMN). “The addition of this Arctic species to the rhinoceros family tree now offers new insights into our understanding of their evolutionary history.”

The study also presents an updated family tree for the rhinoceros and provides evidence that the new Arctic species migrated to North America across a land bridge that may have passed to disperse terrestrial mammals millions of years later than previous evidence suggests.

About Epiaceratherium itjilik

Rhinos come in a variety of shapes and sizes, from large and hippo-like to relatively small and hornless. Epitherium IT Jelik was relatively small and light, about the size of a modern Indian rhinoceros, but it lacked horns. The Arctic specimen is believed to be early to mid-adult based on the moderate wear of the cheek teeth.

The species name “Itjilik” means “frost” or “frost” in Inuktitut. The research team wanted to respect the rhino’s high Arctic home, so they consulted with Jarlo Kegktik, an elder and former mayor of Graceford, the northernmost Inuit community in Canada. He has visited the fossil deposits of Houghton Crater and also participated in several paleontological expeditions in the High Arctic.

Most of the rhino bones were collected by Dr Mary Dawson at the Houghton Crater site in 1986. She was curator emeritus at the Carnegie Museum of Natural History in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, and a trailblazer in arctic paleontology. It exposed diagnostic parts – upper and lower teeth, mandibles and parts of the skull – which allowed the CMN team to describe it as a rhinoceros and a new species.

“What’s remarkable about the Arctic rhino is that the fossil bones are in excellent condition. They are three-dimensionally preserved and have been replaced only by mineralization. About 75 percent of the skeleton was discovered, which is incredibly complete for a fossil,” says paleontologist Marissa Gilbert, who studied with CMN’s CMN.

Gilbert participated in several research expeditions to Heaton Crater in the late 2000s, led by Dr. Natalia Rybsinsky, CMN Research Associate and another co-author of the study. These expeditions led to the discovery of another new species, the ancestor of the transitional seal, Paigela darwinii.

Additional remains of EIT Jelik were found on subsequent field expeditions led by the CMN, when Dawson joined Rybkinski and Gilbert. He was anticipating the Hatton site as a follow-up to Dawson’s fieldwork. Dawson died in 2020 at the age of 89 and has since been cited as the fourth author on the study.

Biography Story

The presence of this new Arctic species was the impetus for the research team to delve deeper into the evolutionary and biographical history of the rhinoceros. Biogeography is the study of how animals and plants have developed and dispersed over time.

Fraser and team placed the new species in the rhino family tree after studying the presence of 57 other taxa of rhinocerotids, almost all of which were extinct. These findings were obtained by visiting museum collections, combing through the scientific literature and using databases.

The team was able to geographically place each graph in one of five continental regions. It was an exhaustive process – each species was scored based on where they were found, using a mathematical modeling approach to determine dispersal rates across these different continents within the family.

The team’s analysis offers new insights into how dispersal occurred over millions of years between North America and Europe using the North Atlantic land bridge between North America and Europe (via Greenland).

Previous studies suggested that this land bridge functioned only as a dispersal corridor until about 56 million years ago. But a new analysis of Epicythrium IT Jelke and related species suggests that the migration from Europe to North America happened very recently, possibly as late as the Miocene.

A paper published in the journal July 2025 highlighted the importance of the Epirium IT Jelic. The nature reported that a scientifically relevant, constitutive protein was extracted from animal tooth enamel. The research, led by Ryan Sinclair Patterson, a postdoctoral fellow at the University of Copenhagen, extends the timescale for evolutionary-informative protein sequences to millions of years. These findings open new avenues for the study of ancient proteins, and their application to understanding mammalian evolution.

“Describing a new species is always exciting and informative. But there’s more to the identification of Epimererium IT Jelke, because our reconstruction of rhino evolution shows that the North Atlantic played a much more important role in their evolution than previously thought,” Fraser says. “More broadly, this study reinforces that the Arctic continues to offer new knowledge and discoveries that expand our understanding of mammal diversity over time.”

The Fossil Collection of the Canadian Museum of Nature houses and prepares fossils of Epitherium etigelic. Preparation of the fossil bones for study was completed at the Carnegie Museum of Natural History.