Weighing up to 7,700 pounds , Elasmotherium sibiricum — an extinct hairy rhinoceros popularly known as the “ Siberian unicorn”—was think to have disappeared as long as 200,000 years ago . An updated fossil depth psychology suggests this unnerving species was still around some 39,000 year ago , and that Ice Age conditions , not human hunters , add to its demise .
paleontologist know of around 250 rhino species , of which only five still exist today . Among the most spectacular of these rhinos was Elasmotherium sibiricum — the Siberian unicorn . For the Neanderthals and modern human who live alongside and perhaps hound this massive beast in Eastern Europe and Central Asia , it must ’ve been an impressive and deep restrain mickle . Fossil evidence suggests Elasmotherium consider over 3.5 tons , was cover in a thick coat of hairsbreadth , and sported a saddle horn of scriptural portions , possibly as long as three feet ( 1 meter ) in length .
Impressive though it may have been , the Siberian unicorns eventually died out . Previous fossil geological dating suggested an expiry date at some compass point between 200,000 and 100,000 years ago , long before the gravid - scale later quaternate megafaunal quenching , which got roll around 40,000 yr ago . Newresearchpublished this week in Nature Ecology & Evolution is now offering a more reliable estimate , date the dying of Elasmotherium at some full stop between 39,000 and 35,000 years ago . The extinction of the Siberian unicorns , therefore , can now be connected to the late Quaternary megafaunal extinction , an consequence that witnessed the remainder of the wooly mammoth , Irish elk , and cavalry sword - toothed cat .
Writing in their new study , led by Adrian Lister from the Natural History Museum in London , the researcher articulate “ no infrangible dating , genetic depth psychology or quantitative ecological judgment of this metal money [ had ] been contract , ” which explains why the anterior extinction estimate was so far off . The new study overcomes these shortcoming , and includes the use of updated dodo dating techniques .
For the subject field , an outside team of investigator from the UK , Netherlands , and Russia withdraw a cheeseparing look at 23 Elasmotherium specimens , include a pristine skull maintain at the Natural History Museum . An improved radiocarbon dating technique resulted in the revised extinction dates ; many of the sample distribution were slather in preservation materials , requiring careful preparation for the carbon date .
“ Some of the samples we study were very contaminate which made the carbon 14 dating very intriguing , ” Thibaut Devièse , a researcher at Oxford ’s School of Archaeology and a co - generator of the field of study , order in a assertion . “ For this reason we used a novel method of extracting a single amino group Elvis from the bone ’s collagen in ordering to see highly precise results . ”
In addition , the investigator succeeded , for the first fourth dimension ever , in extracting DNA from the Elasmotherium fossils . The result hereditary depth psychology showed that Siberian unicorn split from forward-looking rhinos around 43 million years ago , “ settling a debate base on fogey evidence and confirming that the two linage had diverge by the Eocene , ” the researchers wrote in the report . These Ice Age rhinoceros are the last metal money of a “ highly distinctive and ancient lineage , ” according to the enquiry .
Siberian unicorns lived alongside anatomically modernistic humans and Neanderthals . That ancient hominids may have prey upon these oversized rhinos is not as horrific a proposition as it may seem . Early human race , in all likelihood a contour of Homo erectus , were hunting rhinos in the Philippines around 700,000 years ago . But while rhinos were on the hominid carte , this fresh research suggests climate change , and not hunters , was responsible for Elasmotherium ’s death .
These rhinoceros , as we now have sex from the new research , lived during the Ice Age just prior to the Last Glacial Maximum — the stage at which the ice sheet covered their turgid surface area , around 26,500 years ago . Earth was prostrate to dramatic climate teddy during this period , farm drought , desertification , a drop curtain in ocean tier , and the steady impingement of glaciers . These climactic disruptions testify fateful to many metal money , Elasmotherium among them .
For the Siberian unicorn , this meant a loss of home ground , and by outcome , the fade of a critical food source , as the new study hypothesizes . In experiment , Lister and his workfellow analyzed stable isotope ratios from the ossified rhino teeth . The researcher seek to link up various plants with the level of carbon and atomic number 7 isotope in their tooth . Siberian unicorns , as this analysis revealed , lived in a dry steppe environs where they champ on tough , dry grasses . The rhinos , with their highly specialized grazing lifestyle and naturally low population numbers , could not adapt promptly enough to the chop-chop changing conditions , the study suggests .
A changing climate , and not humankind , were thus creditworthy for the demise of E. sibiricum . Interestingly , it ’s a conclusion that jibes well with exchangeable , but unrelated , research , in which scientists claim that man were n’t responsible for many megafaunal experimental extinction of the Ice Age . Sadly , the same can not be said for the ongoingsixth mass extinction , which ismost sure our fault .
[ Nature Ecology & Evolution ]
ice agePaleontologyScience
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