Another widely distributed species was the _Rhinoceros tichorhinus_--the smooth-skinned rhinoceros--also called the woolly rhinoceros and the Siberian rhinoceros, which had two horns, and, like the mammoth, was covered with woolly hair. It attained a great size; a specimen, the carcase of which was found by Pallas imbedded in frozen soil near Wilui, in Siberia (1772), was eleven and a half feet in length. Its horns are considered by some of the native tribes of northern Asia to have been the talons of gigantic birds; and Ermann and Middendorf suppose that their discovery may have originated the accounts by Herodotus of the gold-bearing griffons and the arimaspi. Its food, ascertained by Von Brandt, and others, from portions remaining in the hollows of its teeth, consisted of leaves and needles of trees still existing in Siberia. The range of this species northwards was as extensive as that of the mammoth, but its remains have not yet been discovered south of the Alps and Pyrenees. The investigation,[49] made by M. E. Lartet in 1860, of the contents of the Grotto of Aurignac, in the department of the Haute Garonne, from which numerous human skeletons had been previously removed in 1852, shows that this animal was included among the species used as ordinary articles of food, or as exceptional items at the funeral feasts of the Palæolithic troglodytes. In the layers of charcoal and ashes immediately outside the entrance to the grotto, and surrounding what is supposed to have been the hearth, the bones of a young _Rhinoceros tichorhinus_ were found, which had been split open for the extraction of the marrow. Numerous other species had been dealt with in the same manner; and all these having received this treatment, and showing marks of the action of fire, had evidently been carried to the cave for banqueting purposes. The remains of Herbivora associated with those of this rhinoceros, consisted of bones of the mammoth, the horse (_Equus caballus_), stag (_Cervus elaphus_), elk (_Megaceros hibernicus_), roebuck (_C. capreolus_), reindeer (_C. tarandus_), auroch (_Bison europæus_). Among carnivora were found remains of _Ursus spelæus_ (cave-bear), _Ursus arctos_? (brown bear), _Meles taxus_ (badger), _Putorius vulgaris_ (polecat), _Hyæna spelæa_ (cave-hyæna), _Felis spelæa_ (cave-lion), _Felis catus ferus_ (wild cat), _Canis lupus_ (wolf), _Canis vulpis_ (fox). Within the grotto were also found remains of _Felis spelæa_ (cave-lion) and _Sus scrofa_ (pig). The cave-bear, the fox, and indeed most of these, probably also formed articles of diet, but the hyæna seems to have been a post attendant at the feast, and to have rooted out and gnawed off the spongy parts of the thrown-away bones after the departure of the company. In the Pleistocene deposits at Würzburg, in Franconia, a human finger-bone occurs with bones of this species, and also of other large mammalia, such as the mammoth, cave-bear, and the like.