A burly “unicorn” that once plodded over grasslands in Siberia was around for much longer than once thought — long enough to have roamed the land at the same time as modern humans.
This one-horned native of the steppes, Elasmotherium sibiricum, was a hefty, furry beast in the rhino family that weighed nearly 4 tons — more than twice the weight of a white rhinoceros, the largest species of modern rhino.
Previous interpretations of E. sibiricum bones suggested that they died out 200,000 years ago, but recent analysis hints that E. sibricum fossils are much younger than that, dating to at least 39,000 years ago and possibly as recently as 35,000 years ago, according to a new study. This would mean that the “unicorn” was still around when people populated the region, the scientists reported.
By Mindy Weisberger – Full Story at Live Science