Hippos, today restricted to sub-Saharan Africa, survived in central Europe far longer than previously assumed. Analyses of bone finds demonstrate that hippos inhabited the Upper Rhine Graben sometime between approximately 47,000 and 31,000 years ago, well into the last ice age. An international research team led by the University of Potsdam and the Reiss-Engelhorn-Museen Mannheim with the Curt-Engelhorn-Zentrum Archäometrie have now published a study on this in the journal Current Biology.