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Giant prehistoric unicorns once roamed the Central Asian Prairies. New research has shown that these so-called Siberian unicorns lived much longer than expected and probably did not disappear until "39,000 years ago".
A horn as long as an adult man, the weight of five dairy cows and a hump that would have made Quasimodo envious: the Siberian unicorn was an awesome beast. In prehistoric times, this rhinoceros-like animal roamed the Central Asian Prairies in the region between Ukraine and China today. That is to say until suddenly disappeared.
Much later off
New research has shown that this was happening much later than expected. An international team of researchers from Leiden, Groningen, Russia, Britain, and Australia discovered that this animal was still walking on the ground until 39,000 years ago. They reached this conclusion on the basis of carbon dating and examination of the remains of 25 unicorns of this type. Until recently, it was assumed that the Siberian unicorn had extinct 260 000 years earlier. This new dating makes it very likely that modern man has seen the powerful unicorn of Siberia.
Climatic fluctuations
"This new research dates from the extinction of the Siberian unicorn at exactly the same time as that of many other large mammals," says Thijs van Kolfschoten, professor emeritus of archeology at the University of Leiden.
"About 40,000 years ago, the earth suffered severe climatic fluctuations, which also led to continuous changes in vegetation. Many large herbivores have been unable to adapt to a different diet. That's probably what happened to the unicorn. '
turnips
This hypothesis is also corroborated by the research done by Margot Kuitems, PhD researcher in Leiden. With the help of isotope research, she discovered that unicorns had very high and stable nitrogen isotope ratios. This may indicate that their diet consists mainly of plants growing under the ground, such as turnips. This could explain why Siberian unicorn teeth continued to grow: turnips also ingested a lot of sand, which probably resulted in very fast wear of the teeth.
Relative to modern rhinoceros
Researchers have also discovered, through DNA research, that the Siberian unicorn was early separating rhino species still present on the planet. the Elasmotheriinae and Rhinocerotinae Subspecies developed from the Eocene Period – between 56 and 34 million years ago – along two distinct branches. The extinction of the Siberian unicorn resulted in the disappearance of the last representative of the Elasmotheriinaesubfamily on the earth.
Leiden, Universiteit
Header Image Credit – Heinrich Harder
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