{"id":73504,"date":"2025-10-14T07:43:08","date_gmt":"2025-10-14T07:43:08","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/73504\/"},"modified":"2025-10-14T07:43:08","modified_gmt":"2025-10-14T07:43:08","slug":"hippos-lived-in-central-europe-around-40000-years-ago-new-study-suggests","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/73504\/","title":{"rendered":"Hippos Lived in Central Europe around 40,000 Years Ago, New Study Suggests"},"content":{"rendered":"

A small, isolated population of common hippos (Hippopotamus amphibius)<\/a> was present in the Upper Rhine Graben in southwestern Germany during the middle Weichselian<\/a>, a period spanning from 47,000 until 31,000 years ago, according to new research.<\/p>\n

\"Radiocarbon<\/a><\/p>\n

Radiocarbon dating reveals the mid-Weichselian presence of common hippos (Hippopotamus amphibius) in the Upper Rhine Graben in Germany. Image credit: Gemini AI.<\/p>\n

Hippos colonized Europe from Africa in multiple waves, probably by multiple species of the genus Hippopotamus, including the common hippo that is only found in sub-Saharan Africa.<\/p>\n

During their maximum geographic distribution in Europe, hippos ranged from the British Isles in the northwest to the Iberian and Italian peninsulas in the south.<\/p>\n

Their presence in the fossil record generally implies temperate conditions with denser vegetation and open water bodies.<\/p>\n

Their origin and relationships to living African common hippos and the exact age of their extinction in central Europe, however, still remain unclear.<\/p>\n

\u201cUntil now, it was believed that common hippos became extinct in central Europe around 115,000 years ago, with the end of the last interglacial period,\u201d said co-senior author Professor Wilfried Rosendahl, general director of the Reiss-Engelhorn-Museen Mannheim.<\/p>\n

\u201cOur study demonstrates that hippos inhabited the Upper Rhine Graben in southwestern Germany sometime between approximately 47,000 and 31,000 years ago.\u201d<\/p>\n

In the study, Professor Rosendahl and colleagues examined 19 hippo specimens from fossil localities of the Upper Rhine Graben.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe Upper Rhine Graben is an important continental climate archive,\u201d said study co-author Dr. Ronny Friedrich, a researcher at the Curt-Engelhorn-Zentrum Arch\u00e4ometrie.<\/p>\n

\u201cAnimal bones that have survived for thousands of years in gravel and sand deposits are a valuable source for research.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cIt\u2019s amazing how well the bones have been preserved,\u201d he added.<\/p>\n

\u201cAt many skeletal remains it was possible to take samples suitable for analysis \u2014 that is not a given after such a long time.\u201d<\/p>\n

The team\u2019s analysis of ancient DNA showed that European Ice Age hippos are closely related to living African hippos and belong to the same species.<\/p>\n

The radiocarbon dating confirmed their presence during a milder climatic phase in the middle Weichselian.<\/p>\n

An additional genome-wide analysis indicated very low genetic diversity, suggesting that the population in the Upper Rhine Graben was small and isolated.<\/p>\n

These results and further fossil evidence show that heat-loving hippos appeared in the same time frame as species adapted to cold temperatures, such as mammoths and woolly rhinos.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe results demonstrate that hippos did not vanish from middle Europe at the end of the last interglacial, as previously assumed,\u201d said study first author Dr. Patrick Arnold, a researcher at the University of Potsdam.<\/p>\n

\u201cTherefore, we should re-analyze other continental European hippo fossils traditionally attributed to the last interglacial period.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cThe current study provides important new insights which impressively prove that the Ice Age was not the same everywhere, but local peculiarities taken together form a complex overall picture \u2014 similar to a puzzle,\u201d Professor Rosendahl said.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt would now be interesting and important to further examine other heat-loving animal species, attributed so far to the last interglacial.\u201d<\/p>\n

The results<\/a> were published on October 8, 2025 in the journal Current Biology.<\/p>\n

_____<\/p>\n

Patrick Arnold et al. Ancient DNA and dating evidence for the dispersal of hippos into central Europe during the last glacial. Current Biology, published online October 8, 2025; doi: 10.1016\/j.cub.2025.09.035<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"A small, isolated population of common hippos (Hippopotamus amphibius) was present in the Upper Rhine Graben in southwestern…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":73505,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[26],"tags":[52266,2084,579,63,4650,5352,1357,170,52267,52268,32936,85,46,45869,141,52269,52270,52271,386],"class_list":{"0":"post-73504","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-wildlife","8":"tag-adna","9":"tag-climate","10":"tag-dna","11":"tag-europe","12":"tag-fossil","13":"tag-gene","14":"tag-genome","15":"tag-germany","16":"tag-hippopotamus","17":"tag-hippopotamus-amphibius","18":"tag-ice-age","19":"tag-il","20":"tag-israel","21":"tag-paleoclimate","22":"tag-science","23":"tag-upper-rhine-graben","24":"tag-weichselian","25":"tag-weichselian-glaciation","26":"tag-wildlife"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/73504","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=73504"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/73504\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/73505"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=73504"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=73504"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=73504"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}