A 9.2 million years old fossilized rhino skull has been discovered buried in volcanic ash. Fossils preserved in volcanic rock are very rare, and account for less than two percent of the world’s known specimens. The specimen was discovered in Turkey, by Pierre-Olivier Antoine and his fellow researchers from the University of Montpellier, France. The fossil is of a large two-horned rhino species that was common in the area around the Eastern Mediterranean during that time period. “According to the researchers, unusual features of the preserved skull suggest that the animal was ‘cooked to death’ at temperatures that may have approached 500° C, in a volcanic flow similar to that of the eruption of Mt. Vesuvius in Italy in 79 A.D.” The death would have been nearly-instantaneous, and followed immediately by extreme dehydration of the body. The researchers describe it thusly, “the body was baked under a temperature approximating 400°C, then dismembered within the pyroclastic flow, and the skull separated from body.” The skull was then carried over 30 km north of the eruption site by the volcanic flow. Read more at http://planetsave.com/2012/11/24/fo...ld-rhino-cooked-to-death/#PL2ZrrJeC7XuCr1S.99
