How ‘Frosty,’ a rhino fossil dug up in Nunavut, complicates the story of how mammals roamed the Earth

The bones are discoloured with age and broken into hundreds of pieces. But when laid side by side, the fragments reveal the outline of a mighty beast – a rhinoceros – that roamed Canada’s High Arctic roughly 23 million years ago.

Long before the caribou, polar bear and musk ox emerged as icons of Canada’s northern wilderness, the rhinos were there, munching their way across a surprisingly verdant landscape while aurora borealis danced overhead.