The southern black rhinoceros, southern hook-lipped rhinoceros or Cape rhinoceros (''Diceros bicornis bicornis'') is an extinct subspecies of the

black rhinoceros The black rhinoceros, black rhino or hook-lipped rhinoceros (''Diceros bicornis'') is a species of rhinoceros, native to eastern and southern Africa including Angola, Botswana, Kenya, Malawi, Mozambique, Namibia, South Africa, Eswatini, Tanzania ...

that was once abundant in

South Africa South Africa, officially the Republic of South Africa (RSA), is the southernmost country in Africa. It is bounded to the south by of coastline that stretch along the South Atlantic and Indian Oceans; to the north by the neighbouring countri ...

from the

Cape Province The Province of the Cape of Good Hope ( af, Provinsie Kaap die Goeie Hoop), commonly referred to as the Cape Province ( af, Kaapprovinsie) and colloquially as The Cape ( af, Die Kaap), was a province in the Union of South Africa and subsequen ...

Transvaal Transvaal is a historical geographic term associated with land north of (''i.e.'', beyond) the Vaal River in South Africa. A number of states and administrative divisions have carried the name Transvaal. * South African Republic (1856–1902; af, ...

, southern

Namibia Namibia (, ), officially the Republic of Namibia, is a country in Southern Africa. Its western border is the Atlantic Ocean. It shares land borders with Zambia and Angola to the north, Botswana to the east and South Africa to the south and ea ...

, and possibly also

Lesotho Lesotho ( ), officially the Kingdom of Lesotho, is a country landlocked country, landlocked as an Enclave and exclave, enclave in South Africa. It is situated in the Maloti Mountains and contains the Thabana Ntlenyana, highest mountains in Sou ...

and southern

Botswana Botswana (, ), officially the Republic of Botswana ( tn, Lefatshe la Botswana, label=Setswana, ), is a landlocked country in Southern Africa. Botswana is topographically flat, with approximately 70 percent of its territory being the Kalahar ...

. It was brought to extinction by excessive hunting and

habitat destruction Habitat destruction (also termed habitat loss and habitat reduction) is the process by which a natural habitat becomes incapable of supporting its native species. The organisms that previously inhabited the site are displaced or dead, thereby ...

around 1850.

Taxonomy

It is unknown from where the original specimen (the

holotype A holotype is a single physical example (or illustration) of an organism, known to have been used when the species (or lower-ranked taxon) was formally described. It is either the single such physical example (or illustration) or one of several ...

), on which

Carl Linnaeus Carl Linnaeus (; 23 May 1707 – 10 January 1778), also known after his ennoblement in 1761 as Carl von Linné Blunt (2004), p. 171. (), was a Swedish botanist, zoologist, taxonomist, and physician who formalised binomial nomenclature, the ...

based ''"Rhinoceros" bicornis'' in

1758 Events January–March * January 1 – Swedish biologist Carl Linnaeus (Carl von Linné) publishes in Stockholm the first volume (''Animalia'') of the 10th edition of Systema Naturae, 10th edition of ''Systema Naturae'', the sta ...

, was collected. It was even proposed that it was indeed the skull of an

Indian rhino } The Indian rhinoceros (''Rhinoceros unicornis''), also called the Indian rhino, greater one-horned rhinoceros or great Indian rhinoceros, is a rhinoceros species native to the Indian subcontinent. It is listed as Vulnerable on the IUCN Red Li ...

(''Rhinoceros unicornis'') with a faked second horn, as Linnaeus erroneously noted

India India, officially the Republic of India (Hindi: ), is a country in South Asia. It is the seventh-largest country by area, the second-most populous country, and the most populous democracy in the world. Bounded by the Indian Ocean on the so ...

as occurrence. This was fixed formally in 1911, when O. Thomas declared the

Cape of Good Hope The Cape of Good Hope ( af, Kaap die Goeie Hoop ) ;''Kaap'' in isolation: pt, Cabo da Boa Esperança is a rocky headland on the Atlantic coast of the Cape Peninsula in South Africa. A common misconception is that the Cape of Good Hope is t ...

as type locality of ''D. bicornis''. Therefore, this population formed the base of the nominal

subspecies In biological classification, subspecies is a rank below species, used for populations that live in different areas and vary in size, shape, or other physical characteristics (morphology), but that can successfully interbreed. Not all species ...

of the black rhinoceros. Later this subspecies became frequently mistaken for the

south-western black rhinoceros The south-western black rhinoceros (''Diceros bicornis occidentalis'') is a subspecies of the black rhinoceros, living in southwestern Africa (northern Namibia and southern Angola, introduced to South Africa). It is currently listed as Near-thre ...

, but the latter has to be considered a separate subspecies (''D. bicornis occidentalis'').

Description

''D. bicornis bicornis'' was the largest of all black rhino subspecies. While the differentiation of subspecies is mostly based on

skull The skull is a bone protective cavity for the brain. The skull is composed of four types of bone i.e., cranial bones, facial bones, ear ossicles and hyoid bone. However two parts are more prominent: the cranium and the mandible. In humans, the ...

and body proportions, as well as details of the

dentition Dentition pertains to the development of teeth and their arrangement in the mouth. In particular, it is the characteristic arrangement, kind, and number of teeth in a given species at a given age. That is, the number, type, and morpho-physiolo ...

, the external appearance of the southern subspecies is not exactly known because no photos exist. The skull was the largest of any known subspecies and proportionally large compared to the body. The limbs were short but slender and the skin folds were probably only weakly pronounced.

Ecology

This subspecies was restricted to well-vegetated regions, in contrast to others that are well adapted to desertic conditions.

IUCN status

As the

IUCN The International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN; officially International Union for Conservation of Nature and Natural Resources) is an international organization working in the field of nature conservation and sustainable use of natu ...

considers the living northern Namibian black rhino populations (''D. bicornis occidentalis'') to belong to ''D. bicornis bicornis'', the latter is listed as "vulnerable" instead of "extinct". This synonymy, based upon du Toit (1987) was, however, considered erroneous by Groves and Grubb (2011).

References

{{Taxonbar, from=Q1401604 Extinct mammals of Africa Rhinoceroses Mammals described in 1758 Taxa named by Carl Linnaeus Mammal extinctions since 1500 Species made extinct by human activities