Archaeological Evidence Confirms Rhinoceros Once Inhabited Southern India

Archaeologists recently discovered 3,500-year-old rhinoceros bone fragments at a Neolithic site called Molapalayam near Coimbatore in Tamil Nadu’s Western Ghats foothills. 

The finds include four foot bones—two metacarpals and two carpals—from an Indian one-horned rhinoceros, identified via comparison to reference collections.

Excavations were conducted in 2021 and 2024, led by V. Selvakumar of Tamil University, with analysis by Abhayan G.S. of the University of Kerala.

The site also yielded bones from multiple animal species, indicating a pastoral community that herded cattle, buffalo, goats, sheep, pigs, and dogs, with cut marks indicating regular butchery for food. 

The discovery also includes bones of wild animals, including elephant, gaur, leopard, sambar deer, wild boar, nilgai, blackbuck, four-horned antelope, gazelle, chital, antelopes, and wild cats. 

This marks the third rhino find in South India, following the discovery of rhino bone fragments in Payyampalli (Tirupattur district in Kerala) and a fossilised skull in Sathankulam (Tuticorin district in Tamil Nadu).

The discovery of rhino bones in Tamil Nadu and Kerala provides key insights into the region’s environmental conditions. The presence of rhinos indicates that expansive grasslands, marshy wetlands, and riverine forests once dominated the region.

It challenges assumptions that Indian rhinos were confined to northern and northeastern grasslands, suggesting a wider prehistoric range across the subcontinent, including Gujarat, Haryana, and Odisha.

In another study, the Birbal Sahni Institute of Palaeosciences used pollen samples from mud beneath wetlands in Kaziranga National Park in Assam, the region currently known for the Indian one-horned rhinoceros.

The study discovered that rhinos were once widely distributed across the Indian subcontinent, but this distribution has since declined markedly since the Holocene.

As northeastern India remained relatively stable climatically and experienced lower human pressure, whereas habitat loss, climate deterioration, and overhunting in the other parts of the country forced rhinoceroses to migrate eastward and eventually concentrate in Kaziranga.