Normally, the oldest name would be used, but a 1977 ruling by the International Commission on Zoological Nomenclature established the proper genus name as Dicerorhinus.ĭ. In 1868, John Edward Gray proposed the name Ceratorhinus. Joshua Brookes considered the Sumatran rhinoceros, with its two horns, a distinct genus from the one-horned Rhinoceros, and gave it the name Didermocerus in 1828. Constantin Wilhelm Lambert Gloger proposed the name Dicerorhinus in 1841. Carl Linnaeus originally classified all rhinos in the genus, Rhinoceros therefore, the species was originally identified as Rhinoceros sumatrensis or sumatranus. Sumatrensis signifies "of Sumatra", the Indonesian island where the rhinos were first discovered. The scientific name Dicerorhinus sumatrensis comes from the Greek terms ' di' (δι, meaning "two"), ' cero' (κέρας, meaning "horn"), and ' rhinos'(ρινος, meaning "nose"). In 1814, the species was given a scientific name by Johann Fischer von Waldheim, a German scientist and curator of the State Darwin Museum in Moscow, Russia. Drawings of the animal, and a written description, were sent to the naturalist Joseph Banks, then president of the Royal Society of London, who published a paper on the specimen that year. The first documented Sumatran rhinoceros was shot 16 km (9.9 mi) outside Fort Marlborough, near the west coast of Sumatra, in 1793. In March 2016, a Sumatran rhinoceros (of the Bornean rhinoceros subspecies) was spotted in Indonesian Borneo. Though a number of rhinos died once at the various destinations and no offspring were produced for nearly 20 years, the rhinos were all doomed in their soon to be logged forest. There was little or no information about procedures that would assist in ex situ breeding. The species is much better studied than the similarly reclusive Javan rhinoceros, in part because of a program that brought 40 Sumatran rhinos into captivity with the goal of preserving the species. It is the most vocal rhino species and also communicates through marking soil with its feet, twisting saplingsinto patterns, and leaving excrement. The Sumatran rhino is a mostly solitary animal except for courtship and offspring-rearing. In 2015, researchers announced that the Bornean rhinoceros had become extinct from the northern part of Borneo (Sabah, Malaysia) however, a tiny population was discovered in East Kalimantan in early 2016. Survival of the Peninsular Malaysia population is in doubt, and one of the Sumatran populations may already be extinct. Their numbers are difficult to determine because they are solitary animals that are widely scattered across their range, but they are estimated to number fewer than 100. They are now critically endangered, with only five substantial populations in the wild: four on Sumatra and one on Borneo. In historical times, they lived in southwest China, particularly in Sichuan. Members of the species once inhabited rainforests, swamps, and cloud forests in India, Bhutan, Bangladesh, Myanmar, Laos, Thailand, Malaysia, Indonesia, and China. A coat of reddish-brown hair covers most of the Sumatran rhino's body. Like both African species, it has two horns the larger is the nasal horn, typically 15–25 cm (5.9–9.8 in), while the other horn is typically a stub. It is the smallest rhinoceros, although it is still a large mammal it stands 112–145 cm (3.67–4.76 ft) high at the shoulder, with a head-and-body length of 2.36–3.18 m (7.7–10.4 ft) and a tail of 35–70 cm (14–28 in). It is the only extant species of the genus Dicerorhinus. The Sumatran rhinoceros, also known as the hairy rhinoceros or Asian two-horned rhinoceros ( Dicerorhinus sumatrensis), is a rare member of the family Rhinocerotidae and one of five extant rhinoceroses.
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