Dicerorhinus is a genus of the family Rhinocerotidae, consisting of a single extant species, the two-horned Sumatran rhinoceros (D. sumatrensis), and several extinct species. The genus likely originated from the Late Miocene of central Myanmar. Many species previously placed in this genus probably belong elsewhere.
Taxonomy Species provisionally considered valid include: †Dicerorhinus fusuiensis originally described as Rhinoceros fusuiensis Early Pleistocene, South China. †Dicerorhinus gwebinensis Zin-Maung-Maung-Thein et al., 2008 Known from a skull of Pliocene-Early Pleistocene age found in Myanmar. Some authors have considered the skull not distinguishable from that of D. sumatrensis.
Historically, Dicerorhinus was a wastebasket taxon. Revisions by several authors over the years have removed many species:
Transferred to Stephanorhinus Dicerorhinus merckii (synonym of Stephanorhinus kirchbergensis) Dicerorhinus hemitoechus Dicerorhinus etruscus Dicerorhinus yunchuchenensis Dicerorhinus jeanvireti Dicerorhinus choukoutienensis (synonym of Stephanorhinus kirchbergensis) Dicerorhinus orientalis (synonym of Stephanorhinus kirchbergensis) Dicerorhinus nipponicus (synonym of Stephanorhinus kirchbergensis)
Transferred to Dihoplus Dicerorhinus megarhinus Dicerorhinus schleiermacheri Dicerorhinus ringstroemi
Transferred to Caementodon Dicerorhinus caucasicus
Transferred to Lartetotherium Dicerorhinus sansaniensis Dicerorhinus cixianensis Chen and Wu, 1976Deng, T.; Li, S., 2023. Restudy of Rhinocerotini fossils from the Miocene Jiulongkou fauna of China. Vertebrata PalAsiatica 61: 198-211 - DOI: 10.19615/j.cnki.2096-9899.230630
Transferred to Rusingaceros Dicerorhinus leakeyi
Placement of the Sumatran rhinoceros among recent and subfossil rhinoceros species based on nuclear genomes (Liu, 2021)
Bayesian morphological phylogeny (Pandolfi, 2023) Note: This excludes living African rhinoceros species.
References
Groves, Colin P., and Fred Kurt (1972). "Dicerorhinus sumatrensis". Mammalian Species (21): 1–6. "A new species of Dicerorhinus (Rhinocerotidae) from the Plio-Pleistocene of Myanmar"