Northern White Rhino skull (NH.CON.41)

This skull of a young female Northern White Rhino (Ceratotherium simum cottoni), was shot by Percy Powell-Cotton on 11 February 1905 near Kiro, a Belgian colonial station on the White Nile in Lado Enclave. This is now part of South Sudan. 

There are two subspecies of White Rhino: The Northern White Rhino and the Southern White Rhino. The Northern White Rhino was named and described by Western scientists in 1908, based on a specimen shot by Percy Powell-Cotton in 1905 and given to the Natural History Museum (NHM) in London. 

The Southern White Rhino (Ceratotherium simum simum) was described in 1810, but by the late 1890s it had been so heavily hunted that it was thought to be extinct until a small population of around 100 animals was found in South Africa in 1895. Thanks to intensive conservation efforts since 1895, there are now around 20,000 Southern White Rhinos in the wild. However, the Northern White Rhino is now critically endangered and thought to be extinct in the wild. 

The last four captive Northern White Rhinos, two males and two females, were moved from a Czech zoo into the Ol Pejeta Conservancy in Kenya in 2009, where they have been kept under armed guard. Sadly, both males – named Suni and Sudan – have since died of natural causes. Only two females remain, Najin and her daughter Fatu. Scientists are working on ‘assisted reproduction’ techniques to try and save the subspecies, but at the moment the fate of the Northern White Rhino is very uncertain.