everyone wants to live in a world full ofunicorns. now, new fossil evidence suggests that humans actually did -- so long as you'rewilling to accept elasmotherium sibiricum as your elegant, spiral-horned wonder horse. what we're talking about here is a prehistoricone-horned eurasian rhino, one of three known species in the elasmotherium genus. they'repretty remarkable in their own right, able
pink fluffy unicorns dancing on rainbows t shirt, to drive home a 6-and-a-half-foot horn with3 or 4 tons of crushing weight. but experts have always wondered if ancient tales of thecreatures might have informed our folkloric concept of the unicorn -- both the delicatewestern 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 extinctionat around 350,000 years ago. but now, a new study published in the americanjournal of applied sciences puts the siberian unicorn in the region of modern-day kazakhstana 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-themedclick bait, but of course the idea that humans coexisted with elasmotherium is pretty excitingon its own. i mean maybe i'm a bit morbid
here, but i'm more interested in whether oneof these beasts ever skewered a neolithic tribesperson. heck, you could shish kabobsa half-dozen on that thing. maybe elasmotherium sibiricum did inspiretales of single-horned magical creatures.
or maybe the myth stems from profile representationsof horned animals. perhaps it all came from sightings of deformed goats or the nose-hornedindian 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.comeach and every day.
