Thousands of years ago, hippos swam in the Rhine. This has now been discovered by a research team that also includes scientists from the Reiss-Engelhorn Museums in Mannheim.
The “Upper Rhine Rift Ice Age Window” project has shown that the animals swam in the Rhine around 30,000 years ago, and numerous bones were examined for this purpose.
Five years of research
For five years, scientists from the Reiss-Engelhorn Museums in Mannheim, the Curt Engelhorn Center for Archaeometry and the University of Potsdam have analyzed hundreds of finds. The project was supported by the Klaus Tschira Foundation. The results are amazing.
Extinct later than thought
Today, hippos are only at home in Africa. In Germany it was assumed that they became extinct 116,000 years ago. The 30 hippopotamus finds from the Upper Rhine Rift say something different.
Hippos, mammoths and Co.
The research results show that hippos still lived in the Upper Rhine region 48,000 to 30,000 years ago. This is proof that the animals were native to the region along with mammoths, woolly rhinos, cave lions and others.
“So the hippopotamus is a real Ice Age inhabitant on the Rhine.”
The animals were able to adapt to temperatures and environmental conditions, said rem general director and project manager Wilfried Rosendahl. The hippos found enough plants to feed on the banks of the rivers.
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Hippo meets mammoth in the “Ice Age Safari” exhibition at the Reiss-Engelhorn Museums.
rem, Foto: Rebecca Kind
Evaluable samples could be taken from many skeletal remains. According to the age determination expert, this cannot be taken for granted after such a long time.
“It’s amazing how well the bones are preserved.”
Special exhibition in the Reiss-Engelhorn-Museums
Further studies also show that the climate in the Upper Rhine Rift Valley was apparently milder than previously assumed. Not only bones but also wood finds were analyzed. It turned out that stately oaks could also grow in the region during the last Ice Age.
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With the lower incidence values, a piece of normalcy has returned to the cultural scene. The large Ice Age exhibition in the Reiss-Engelhorn Museums in Mannheim has been open since Pentecost Sunday.
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The researchers’ results are in the Special exhibition “Ice Age Safari” in the Reiss-Engelhorn museums to see – including a lifelike replica of a hippopotamus in the Rhine. The exhibition can be seen in Mannheim until mid-February 2022.
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