A Northern White Rhino Skeleton From the San Diego Zoo Comes to NHM
The new specimen highlights the crucial relationship zoos play in ensuring rare and endangered species are represented in museum collections.
Published September 10, 2025
One of the pleasures of working at a Natural History Museum is that sometimes you’ll get a message along the lines of, “Somebody’s dropping off a northern white rhino skeleton if you want to come by.”
Collected in multiple cardboard boxes pulled from the back of a van, Dinka, the northern white rhino, physically entered the Museum’s Mammalogy Collection riding on a dolly through the double doors of a freight elevator. The name Dinka might sound familiar.
Born in South Sudan, Dinka was first captured in the wild as an adult in 1953 and brought to a Sudanese zoo. The St. Louis Zoo acquired him in 1957 before he was taken to the San Diego Zoo in 1972 and ultimately the Safari Park in 1982 in an effort to breed the subspecies back from the brink of extinction. When he died in 1991, he was one of only 35 animals left on the planet.
"With collection specimens and scientific advancement, there’s hope."
Dr. Kayce Bell, Curator of Mammalogy
Gross overhunting during the colonial era decimated rhino populations, and poaching continues to be the number one threat. Northern white rhinos, and all rhinos, are hunted by poachers for their horns, which have absolutely zero medical use and are formed of keratin, the same protein that makes up our fingernails and hair. Despite their uselessness for human activity, the lust for rhino horns continues to fuel the destruction of these giants in the wild. Destruction of their habitat, along with regional violence, has also contributed to the rhino’s decline in the wild. On the day his skeleton was brought to the Museum, there were only two northern white rhinos still living, both of them females, making the subspecies functionally extinct.
Dinka spent 34 years as a teaching specimen at the University of California, Riverside, before reaching the Museum, but the path of large animals from zoos to museum collections is a well-worn one. Since it began caring for northern white rhinos, the San Diego Zoo has hosted eight of them, and NHM has four of them under our care.
Because it’s incredibly rare to get endangered animal specimens from the wild, zoos are especially important partners to make sure rare animals make it into museum collections for future research. Donations from zoos mean that even endangered animals can make it into collections where they can help scientists further conservation research. Even though there are no more males to reproduce with, conservation scientists have not given up on saving these iconic giants.
The successful maintenance of the small southern white rhino population, along with the creation of viable embryos that might someday be implanted in their southern cousins, means the northern white rhino’s story isn’t over. As part of their conservation efforts, the San Diego Zoo maintains genetic materials from rare and endangered species in its Frozen Zoo. These cryopreserved materials can help reintroduce lost genetic diversity through genetic engineering, cutting-edge reproductive technology, and cloning. Specimens like Dinka could still have a role to play in their preservation. Analyzing things like a specimen’s teeth, for example, can reveal huge amounts of information on their diet and what they might need to thrive. The diet of white rhinos in captivity has been flagged as impacting fertility, and having those teeth could help inform needed changes.
“When the first specimens were added to NHM’s Mammalogy Collections, researchers had no idea they could be repositories for DNA extraction and pathogen studies,” says Dr. Kayce Bell, Curator of Mammalogy at NHM. ”It’s one of the things that makes specimens like this so crucial for conservation. We just don’t know what we’ll be able to do in the future. With collection specimens and scientific advancement, there’s hope.”
