Résumé
On the edge of extinction and restricted to scattered areas in Africa and tropical Asia today, rhinoceroses were once conspicuous components of mammalian guilds in most landmasses. The fossil record of the family Rhinocerotidae, ranging the last 40 million years (Ma), includes ~200 extinct species assigned to ~67 genera. They originated in eastern/South Asia and North America, before they dispersed into Central Asia, and Europe after the Eocene-Oligocene transition (33.9 Ma) and into Afro-Arabia by early Miocene times (~20 Ma). Extinct rhinocerotids widely exceeded their recent kin regarding morphological disparity (horn shape and number; body weight; limb bone proportions) and ecological diversity (feeding habits; habitats). Niche partitioning may explain the presence of multispecific rhinocerotid assemblages in Old World Miocene localities. Their taxonomic diversity dropped drastically by the latest Miocene, with the progressive disappearance of hornless and hippo-like aceratheriines and teleoceratines. Only the rhinocerotines (modern rhinoceroses and kin) and gigantic elasmotheriines survived into the cold-dominated Pliocene-Pleistocene world. Cold steppe dwellers Elasmotherium and woolly rhino (Coelodonta) became extinct by latest Pleistocene times, leaving five living species as the last Holocene rhinocerotids. A revised list of Old World rhinocerotid genera and species is provided for the middle Eocene-Recent time interval.