News Paleontology Ancient, water-loving rhinos gathered in big, hippolike herds The beasts lived and died together after an erupting supervolcano blanketed their world in ash Fossils of the barrel-bodied rhino Teleoceras (shown) are among the most common ancient herbivores excavated at Ashfall Fossil Beds State Historical Park in northern Nebraska. The animals perished roughly 12 million years ago due to impacts from the eruption of the Yellowstone supervolcano. James St. John/Flickr (CC BY 2.0) By Jake Buehler 2 hours ago Millions of years ago in Nebraska, chunky, stumpy-legged rhinoceroses were party animals, crowding together in huge herds at watering holes and rivers. Chemical signatures in the fossilized teeth of the extinct, corgi-shaped beasts suggest they didn’t roam widely, instead forming big, local herds unlike the more solitary rhinos of today, researchers report April 4 in Scientific Reports. About 12 million years ago during the Miocene Epoch, the Yellowstone supervolcano erupted and covered much of North America in ash. Around a watering hole that eventually became Nebraska’s Ashfall Fossil Beds State Historical Park, about a foot of the debris fell on the landscape. Sign up for our newsletter We summarize the week's scientific breakthroughs every Thursday.