Molly O'Toole, age 12, of Lansing, Michigan, for her question:

Is the rhinoceros a prehistoric animal?

Some of the dinosaurs looked somewhat like remote ancestors of the modern rhino, but they were not related. The dinosaurs were offbeat lizards of the cold blooded reptile clan. The rhinoceros is a warm blooded mammal. Millions of years ago, his mammal ancestors shared the prehistoric world with the dinosaurs. The rhino's family survived to modern times  ¬the dinosaur's became extinct about 60 million years ago.

We mark the beginning of history from the time that mankind learned to read and write. This was only about 6,000 years ago    and the long ages of prehistory date back through many hundreds of millions of years. The ancestors of all our modern animals were alive in prehistoric times, though some of them would have been hard to recognize. For example, scientists suspect that at some time in the dim past, the ancestors of the bulky rhino may have been distantly related to the elegant horse.