MARCH 29, 2016
by Chuck Bednar
Though considerably different than the majestic, white-colored,
horse-like creature they are so often depicted as, unicorns actually did exist,
and newly discovered fossilized skull suggests the long-extinct mammals last
roamed the Earth less than 30,000 years ago.
According to Yahoo News and ScienceAlert, the species known as Elasmotherium
sibiricum or the "Siberian unicorn" more closely resembled a
mammoth or a rhinoceros than a horse, stood roughly six to seven feet tall,
weighed upwards of 8,000 pounds, and was covered with fur.
Experts had previously believed that the not-quite-fairy-tail-like
creature became extinct around 350,000 years ago, but radiocarbon dating of a
well-preserved skull found in the Pavlodar
region of Kazakhstan
Researchers at Tomsk State
University in Siberia , who dated the
newfound fossil, reported in the latest edition of the American Journal
of Applied Sciences that the size and condition of the fossil suggests
that it most likely belonged to a male Siberian unicorn of advanced age.
So how did the unicorn manage to survive for so long?
Lead author Andrey Shpanski, a paleontologist at Tomsk
State , and his colleagues believe that
the Siberian unicorn lived in a refuge-like region in the south of Western Siberia , allowing it to remain alive and well
thousands of years after the majority of its relatives died off.
Shpanski said in a statement that his
team is hoping to discover what environmental factors may have played a role in
the species extinction, and whether or not migration helped keep them alive up
that point – data which could be useful in dealing with modern-day climate
change.
Their research, he said, “makes adjustments in the understanding of
the environmental conditions in the geologic time in general. Understanding of
the past allows us to make more accurate predictions about natural processes in
the near future.” The hope is that their work will be able to shed new light on
exactly how environmental factors contribute to extinction in general.
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