Everyone wants to live in a world full of
unicorns. Now, new fossil evidence suggests
that humans actually did -- so long as you're
willing to accept Elasmotherium sibiricum
as your elegant, spiral-horned wonder horse.
What we're talking about here is a prehistoric
one-horned Eurasian rhino, one of three known
species in the Elasmotherium genus. They're
pretty remarkable in their own right, able
to drive home a 6-and-a-half-foot horn with
3 or 4 tons of crushing weight. But experts
have always wondered if ancient tales of the
creatures might have informed our folkloric
concept of the unicorn -- both the delicate
Western variety and its fiery Asian cousin.
It's just one of many unprovable unicorn theories,
but one huge problem was always the lack of
overlap between Elasmotherium and Homo sapiens.
We sprang up roughly 200,000 years ago, while
previous estimates placed Elasmotherium extinction
at around 350,000 years ago.
But now, a new study published in the American
Journal of Applied Sciences puts the Siberian
unicorn in the region of modern-day Kazakhstan
a mere 29,000 years ago. According to Tomsk
State University paleontologist Andrey Shpanski,
this may have served as a refugium or last
redoubt for the species -- you know, until,
presumably, Voldemort or those goblins from
'Legend' killed it dead.
This paper resulted in a LOT of Unicorn-themed
click bait, but of course the idea that humans
coexisted with Elasmotherium is pretty exciting
on its own. I mean maybe I'm a bit morbid
here, but I'm more interested in whether one
of these beasts ever skewered a Neolithic
tribesperson. Heck, you could shish kabobs
a half-dozen on that thing.
Maybe Elasmotherium sibiricum DID inspire
tales of single-horned magical creatures.
Or maybe the myth stems from profile representations
of horned animals. Perhaps it all came from
sightings of deformed goats or the nose-horned
Indian and Javan rhinos.
So where do YOU think unicorns come from?
Let us know, and if you crave more weird science
wonders, be sure to explorenow.howstuffworks.com
each and every day.
