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They also find that-while dwindling populations of rhinos today have lower genetic diversity and more inbreeding than they did in the past-rhinoceroses have historically had low levels of genetic diversity. The findings show that the oldest split separated African and Eurasian lineages about 16 million year ago. Now, researchers reporting in the journal Cell on August 24 have helped to fill the gaps in the rhino evolutionary family tree by analyzing genomes of all five living species together with the genomes of three ancient and extinct species. One reason answers have been hard to come by is that most rhinos went extinct before the Pleistocene. There’s been an age-old question going back to Darwin’s time about the relationships among the world’s five living rhinoceros species. In the far background is a woolly rhinoceros ( Coelodonta antiquitatis). In the foreground is a Siberian unicorn ( Elasmotherium sibiricum), and close behind are two Merck’s rhinoceroses ( Stephanorhinus kirchbergensis). This illustration shows a paleoartist’s reconstruction of the three extinct rhinoceros species whose genomes were sequenced as part of the study.