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The Siberian unicorn lived at the same time as modern humans

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2021-06-16 03:00:03

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The ancient rhino has been dubbed the Siberian unicorn due to the large single horn it may have once sported © W S van der Merwe

For a long time it was thought that the ancient rhino species Elasmotherium sibiricum, known as the Siberian unicorn, went extinct between 200,000 and 100,000 years ago.

Today there are just five surviving species of rhino, but at different times in the past there were as many as 250 different species. Of these, one of the most impressive was Elasmotherium sibiricum.

Weighing up to 3.5 tonnes, it lived on the Eurasian grasslands ranging from southwestern Russia and Ukraine to Kazakhstan and Siberia.

For those studying the fauna of the last Ice Age, one of the most significant events of the period was the megafaunal extinction. It saw the disappearance of many large, iconic species such as the woolly mammoth, the Irish elk and the sabre-toothed cat.