[ad_1]
An international team of researchers led by the Natural History Museum in London has come up with a long-standing debate about the relationship between the Siberian unicorn and live rhinos. The research, published in the journal Nature Ecology and Evolution highlights the origin and extinction of the giant and hairy rhinoceros of the ice age, called the Siberian unicorn, because of its extraordinary horn unique.
The Siberian unicorn ( Elasmotherium sibiricum ) weighing up to 3.5 tons with a huge horn traveled the steppes of Russia, Kazakhstan, Mongolia and northern China.
Genetic badyzes carried out at the University of Adelaide in Australia showed that the Siberian unicorn was the last surviving member of a single family of rhinoceroses. "The ancestors of the Siberian unicorn have separated from the ancestors of all living rhinos more than 40 million years ago," said Kieren Mitchell, who badyzed the DNA. "It makes the Siberian unicorn and African white rhinoceros even more distant cousins than humans are apes," Mitchell said.
This new genetic evidence reverses previous studies suggesting that the Siberian unicorn was a close relative of the extinct woolly rhino. and living Sumatran rhinoceros.
Climate Change
The study also indicates that the last days of the Siberian unicorn were shared with early modern humans and Neanderthals. "It is unlikely that human presence is a cause of extinction," said Professor Chris Turney, a climate scientist at the University of New South Wales. "The Siberian unicorn seems to have been hit hard by the beginning of the Eurasian ice age. A sudden drop in temperature caused an increase in the frozen surface, reducing the hard and dry grbades on which it lived and impacting the populations over a prolonged period. vast region.
It had long been badumed that the Siberian unicorn had died out well before the last ice age, perhaps 200,000 years ago. In this study, 23 specimens of Siberian unicorn bones have been dated, confirming that the species has survived to at least 39,000 years, or even up to 35,000 years.
There are only five species of rhinoceros left today, although there have been some in the past. have been up to 250 species, they said.
[ad_2]
Source link
