The Royal Mint’s Tales of the Earth continues with its second coin commemorating Ice Age giants. Although vast areas of the globe were taken up by ice sheets during the Pleistocene Epoch, which is often referred to as the Ice Age, there were also large areas of land where greenery flourished and these open grassland areas sustained a wide variety of life, including the woolly rhinoceros.

One of the largest beasts to roam the Earth during the Ice Age, the woolly rhinoceros was similar in appearance to its modern-day counterpart. Weighing around 2 tonnes, it was about the same size as a living African white rhinoceros but had a thick double-layered wool coat and a sabre-like front horn, which is thought to have been used to clear snow when searching for food.

This Woolly Rhinoceros UK 50p coin features a reverse design created by palaeo-artist Robert Nicholls in collaboration with the expert guidance of palaeobiologist Professor Adrian Lister from the Natural History Museum