The Siberian unicorn lived at the same time as the modern man

Today, there are only five species of rhinoceros, but at different times in the past there were up to 250 different species. Of these, one of the most impressive was Elasmotherium sibiricum.

Weighing up to 3.5 tons, he lived in the Eurasian grasslands ranging from southwestern Russia and from Ukraine to Kazakhstan and Siberia.

Finally the species is extinct – but the exact moment when this occurred has been questioned.

For those who study wildlife from the last ice age, one of the most significant events of this period was the extinction of the megafauna. It has seen the disappearance of many great flagship species such as the woolly mammoth, Irish elk and saber-tooth cat.

Professor Adrian Lister, a researcher specializing in the field of scientific research at the Museum, said: "This megafauna extinction event really only began about 40,000 years ago. So Elasmotherium with its apparent extinction date of 100,000 years ago was not considered part of this same event. & # 39;

In recent years, however, it has been suggested that this sunset date E. sibiricum could be wrong.

"We have dated a few specimens – like the magnificent complete skull we have at the Museum – and our surprise they arrived at less than 40,000 years ago, "says Adrian.

On his own it did not mean much, but by teaming up with researchers from the Netherlands and Russia, many more fossils were sampled. The researchers, who originally did not have a single radiocarbon radiometer dated Elasmotherium fossil, finished with 23 dated specimens.

"They all very strongly confirmed that this species had survived to at least 39,000 years and perhaps up to 35,000 years," says Adrian. The results were published in Nature Ecology & Evolution.

Ice Age giants

Elasmotherium sibiricum was a true glaciation giant, weighing up to twice as much as a modern rhinoceros.

Unusually, despite its massive size and prominent shoulder hump, it is thought that the Siberian unicorn was really suited for fast running.

"The rhinoceros anatomy suggested that he lived in pretty grassy plains, clearing almost entirely of grass," says Adrian. "His unusual teeth also seem very suitable for this type of pasture."

By studying the stable isotope ratios in the rhinoceros teeth, which involves examining the levels of different isotopes of carbon and nitrogen, and then comparing them to different plants, the researchers have could determine what the animals ate. The results confirm that the Siberian unicorn probably suffered from hard and dry weeds.

However, in terms of their behavior, researchers must rely on live animals.

"Modern rhinos tend to be rather solitary and distributed in their habitat," explains Adrian. & # 39; Combined with ElasmotheriumThe restricted geographical area of, it could have been a rather rare animal.

The last unicorn

This natural scarcity is perhaps one of the factors that pushed the Siberian unicorn to extinction 39,000 years ago, at about the same time that the Neanderthals were dying out and some time before the last appearance of bears and spotted hyenas in Europe.

This means that the animals would have shared Eurasia with modern humans and Neanderthals, but as Adrian explains, it is unlikely that they were hunted down to the point where they were killed. extinction.

"There is no evidence that people have had anything to do with this. You can not rule it out, but we have no archaeological associations of this animal with people in any way on the sites known to date, "he says.

Instead of it is much more likely that their extinction is the result of the dramatic climate fluctuations that occurred during this period, associated with the specialized pasture lifestyle and low population.

"The environment in which the animal lived seems to have changed considerably at about the same time that it went off," says Adrian, "so it's quite plausible that he's going to have a good time." it was a rare animal to start with, it would have been relatively high risk of extinction. & # 39;

The first DNA

Finally, Adrian's colleagues in Australia were able to extract DNA from some of the fossils. This is the first time that a DNA has been recovered from E. sibiricum.

This settled a debate about where the Siberian unicorn, with all the other members of the Elastrotherium genus, suitable for the rhinoceros evolutionary tree.

It turns out that the old group separated from the modern rhino group about 43 million years ago. This means that the Siberian unicorn was the last species of an ancient and extremely distinctive lineage when it went extinct in the Eurasian plains just a few tens of thousands of years ago.