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Triops Longicaudatus
Triops Longicaudatus Red
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Palaeontology: Hippopotamuses in the Ice Age – Colossal creatures roamed the Upper Rhine Graben
New analyses reveal that these heat-loving animals survived in Central Europe much longer than previously thought.
It has long been known that hippos once lived in Central Europe. But now a new study has caused quite a stir: these impressive animals, which today are only found in sub-Saharan Africa, apparently lived on German soil for much longer than previously assumed.
An interdisciplinary research team from the University of Potsdam, the Reiss-Engelhorn Museums and the Curt Engelhorn Centre for Archaeometry in Mannheim has re-examined bone finds from the Upper Rhine Graben – with remarkable results. Radiocarbon dating and DNA analyses show that hippopotamuses still lived there between 47,000 and 31,000 years ago. They shared their Ice Age environment with mammoths and woolly rhinoceroses at a time when Europe was long dominated by cold temperatures and glaciers.
Late survivors of a warmer period
Until now, researchers assumed that the so-called common hippopotamus disappeared from Central Europe at the beginning of the last ice age, around 115,000 years ago. Too cold, too inhospitable, was the common explanation. The new findings now call this picture into question. Apparently, a milder microclimate existed in the Upper Rhine Graben, a low-lying plain along the Rhine between Switzerland, France and south-western Germany.
‘The study impressively shows that the Ice Age did not proceed in the same way everywhere,’ says Wilfried Rosendahl, Director General of the Reiss-Engelhorn Museums. ‘There were local refuges where heat-loving animals were able to survive for a surprisingly long time.’
A small, isolated population
The study, published in the journal Current Biology, suggests that the population in the Upper Rhine Graben was probably small and isolated. The animals apparently still found sufficient habitat in river valleys and old water bodies, a relict population in the midst of the ice age cold.
Genetic analysis also revealed that the hippopotamuses of that time were closely related to today’s African representatives (Hippopotamus amphibius) and belong to the same species.
Giants among mammoths
The giant hippopotamus, which can weigh over three tonnes, prefers warm habitats and is dependent on water. The fact that it still existed in south-western Germany in the middle of the Ice Age shows how dynamic the climate was at that time. Apparently, the Upper Rhine Rift Valley offered sufficiently mild conditions at times to provide an ecological niche for these mighty herbivores.
Apart from the large hippopotamus, there is only one other species today, the significantly smaller pygmy hippopotamus (Choeropsis liberiensis), which lives in the dense rainforests of West Africa.
Evidence of an astonishing past
The fossils from sand and gravel deposits in the Upper Rhine Graben are therefore not only remnants of a bygone animal world, but also evidence of the complexity of the European ice age climate. The new findings paint a more nuanced picture of how animal species responded to environmental changes – and how even heat-loving giants were able to survive for a surprisingly long time in Central Europe.
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