Ancient people saw it: scientists have confirmed that a unicorn really roamed the grasslands of Eurasia thousands of years ago (photo)
Unicorns are not just a fairy tale invention, even though we are used to imagining them as characters jumping over rainbows. In fact, thousands of years ago, a unicorn also migrated across Eurasia, but it looked completely different.
Looking deep into the past, scientists have discovered a giant creature known as an elasmotherium that once inhabited Eurasia. This ancient beast, weighing about 3.5 tons, was called the "Siberian unicorn" due to the huge horn that grew on its head. This is reported by IFLScience.
Recent scientific research challenges traditional notions of the time of extinction of the elasmotherium, an ancient relative of the rhinoceros. Previously, this unusual creature was thought to have disappeared between 200,000 and 100,000 years ago, but new data suggests that it existed alongside Neanderthals as early as 39,000 years ago.
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The Siberian unicorn was approximately 4.5 meters long, making it similar in size to a modern elephant. Most impressive was its horn, which was two meters long. Scientists believe that the horn was composed of keratin, similar to the horns of modern rhinos, although the exact composition of the horn remains a matter of debate because keratin is rarely preserved in fossils.
One of the most famous Siberian unicorn skulls is on display at the Natural History Museum in London. A team of researchers led by Professor Adrian Lister was stunned to find out that this skull is less than 40,000 years old, a significant breakthrough in the study of these prehistoric creatures.
Further research has shown that there are many fossils of similar age, which completely refutes the theory that elasmobranchs went extinct 200 to 100 thousand years ago.
Why did they disappear?
A recent study found that the Elasmotheriinae subfamily split off from the Rhinocerotinae as early as the Eocene. This finding points to the extinction of the Siberian unicorn and confirms that the entire Elasmotheriinae subfamily has disappeared.
The limited habitat, low population size, and slow reproduction rate due to its large size could have caused the species to go extinct under environmental changes, the researchers concluded.
The latest evidence suggests that the ancient unicorn existed on Earth between 35,000 and 39,000 years ago, which coincides with the time of the Neanderthal extinction. Although the exact causes of the Siberian unicorn's extinction remain unknown, scientists suggest that environmental factors may have played a key role in the process.
Earlier, we told you that a giant creature that was thought to be extinct 120 years ago was found in Madagascar.
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