MEXICO CITY – Mexican paleontologists have determined that fossils found in Jalisco state belong to a species of ancient rhinoceros – Teleoceras hicksi – that lived a little more than 4.5 million years ago, the research team’s leader told Efe.

“When we learned that nobody had studied the fossils, we took the initiative and today we’re describing for the first time a species that had been identified only in the United States, Ruben Guzman Gutierrez said.

Identified remains of the species had been found to date in Nebraska, Colorado and Texas, but never in Mexico, until these fossils were located in Jalisco’s Tecolotlan region.

Guzman, chairman of the Paleontology Department at the Tourism Secretariat for Aguascalientes state in central Mexico, said the fossils that are now in the Regional and Paleontology Museums in Guadalajara, were found in the late 1960s in Tecolotlan.

During the 1970s, they were displayed for the public “without any type of designation pertaining to the species,” something that has been corrected now that it has been determined to what species the fossilized bones belong, National Institute of Anthropology and History, or INAH, officials said.

The Mexican fossils include an almost complete cranium, which – besides Guzman – other scientists are studying, including Gerardo Carbot Chanona of the Eliseo Palacios Aguilera Paleontology Museum in Chiapas and Javier Juarez Woo, of the Guadalajara Paleontology Museum, are studying.

“Teleoceras hicksi had amphibian habits. It lived in areas with a humid tropical climate and ate grass,” Guzman said.

The species was of medium size and had much smaller horns on its snout than rhino species living today.

“The investigation was done so many years after (finding the fossils) because there was no funding and not enough paleontologists, and we’re sure that there’s still much to discover (about the species),” Guzman said. EFE