The species was originally described by Hugh Falconer in 1859 based on remains found in cave deposits in Glamorganshire, south Wales in Great Britain, dating to the Eemian/Last interglacial, around 130-115,000 years ago.

[1] In Europe the species is known from abundant remains in the Iberian Peninsula in the west (where S. kirchbergensis appears to have been rare or absent),[13] eastwards to Italy,[5] Bulgaria[14] and Greece.

[20] In North Africa, where the species was previously known as Rhinoceros subinermis[15], remains are known from Cyrenacia in northeast Libya[1] as well as the Maghreb in Morocco[1] and northern Algeria.

A 1993 study suggested that the species may have been sedentary (having a home range and not migratory) and territorial, and probably engaged in ritualized confrontations between males, which may have sometimes broken out into full-on fighting.

[9] A rib of a narrow-nosed rhinoceros from Neumark Nord in Germany has been found with a healed fracture, which may have been the result of such a fight.

[33] Across its range, the narrow-nosed rhinoceros lived alongside other megafauna species, including both animals living today, like red deer, fallow deer, roe deer, wild boar, wolves, brown bears, leopards, wild horse and bison, and those that are extinct, like European wild ass, aurochs, cave hyena, Irish elk, cave lions and straight-tusked elephants.

Specimens of S. hemitoechus from the Middle Pleistocene (Marine Isotope Stage 12, 478,000-424,000 years ago) Arago Cave (Caune de l'Arago) site in Southern France shows extensive evidence of butchery (presumably by Tautavel Man, which is found at the same site).

[37] At Biache-Saint-Vaast in northeast France, dating to MIS 7, around 240,000 years ago,[38] remains of at least 33 individuals of S. hemitoechus were found in association with human artifacts, with a significant proportion displaying cut marks.

[35] At the collapsed cave of Payre in southeast France, dating to the late Middle Pleistocene, numerous remains of rhinoceroses, primarily S. kirchbergensis along with a smaller amount of S. hemitoechus have been found, which display marks indicative of butchery and are suggested to have been accumulated at the site by Neanderthals.

The abundance of teeth found at the site (though other skull material is largely absent) suggests that the Neanderthals may have been using them as tools.

[31] In the Levant, the species may have survived as recently as 15,500 years ago based on remains found in Hayonim Cave, Israel.

[47][22] Its extinction in southern Europe was suggested in a 2017 study to be due at least in part to climatic change causing habitat fragmentation resulting in population fragmentation, with small populations more likely to become extinct for a variety of reasons, "including loss of genetic variability, inbreeding, genetic drift, demographic fluctuations and environmental variations or natural catastrophes".