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| Location: |
Africa - Southern Africa - Namibia |
| Subject: |
Distribution - Records |
| Species: |
Black Rhino |
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In the sandy course of the Tumas River, about 47 km inland from the Atlantic coast, I found a front horn of a rhinoceros on 3 January 1972. The object was lying near a hill of smooth granite at the edge of a sandy tributary of the Tumas River. From its position and its condition, it was thought that the horn appeared through erosion. It is improbable that hunters brought it here some time ago or that a carnivore moved it to this place. Yet these possibilities can never be conclusively ruled out. Considering the former distribution of the black rhinoceros in South West Africa and considering the shape and size of the horn, it should be a front horn of an adult black rhinoceros, Diceros bicornis L., family Rhinocerotidae. The horn is preserved in Museum Swakopmund, nr. N 7
The current distribution of the black rhinoceros in SW Africa is limited to the north-western part of the country, where an estimate in 1966 would not yield more than 90 animals (Joubert 1971). The South-West-African black rhinoceros is, according to Joubert (1970) so little different from the nominal subspecies Diceros bicornis bicornis from Zululand, that the dimensions do not allow further subspecific differentiation.
In earlier times, the black rhinoceros lived in SW Africa from the Kunene to the Orange River. On the western side its range often extended far into the Namib. It is probable that these animals were never numerous as they depended on open water and that it had a disjunct distribution.
Heinrich Vedder (1934) wrote about the three botasmen of the Dutch vessel 'Meermin' who saw rhinoceroses on 23 February 1793 in the forests along the mouth of the Swakop River. He also mentioned the rhinoceros encounters of Hahn and Rath, who often saw these animals in 1847 and 1850 in the area of the Swakop.
Joubert (1971) reconstructed the former distribution of around 1850 from the accounts of travellers and from rockpaintings. The place where this horn was found is close to the western edge of the former range in the central Namib. The closest recorded place was that of Andersson (1856) in September 1850 in the Swakop valley at the Husab, about 13.5 km in a straight line from the collection point.
To the east and west of my locality there are no further known occurrences of the black rhinoceros. The closest in a south-eastern direction is the Kuiseb valley where J.E. Alexander saw rhinos at the end of 1836.
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Fund eines Nashorn-Vorderhorns in der zentralen Namib
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