Scientists Have Discovered a ‘Unicorn’ Skull in Siberia

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In the ’80s, unicorns were everywhere. You’d see them in movies and on t-shirts, and sketches of them covered the Pee-Chee folders of elementary school girls across the country. In 1984, Ringling Brothers and Barnum & Bailey Circus even trotted out a goat-like beast (the angora caprine) with a gold-painted bull’s horn affixed to its head and called it “The Living Unicorn.” For those of you who’ve waited 30 years for your unicorn dreams to come true, Russian scientists have discovered an actual unicorn fossil. But this Siberian beast is far from the magical, mono-horned white steed you saw on She-Ra: Princess of Power.

Recently, Russian scientists discovered the preserved skull of an Elasmotherium sibiricum in Kazakhstan’s Pavlodar region in Siberia. The animal has a large rhino-esque horn that projects out of the center of its head, just like the mythical unicorn. But this guy is 6 feet tall, 15 feet long, and weighs almost 9,000 pounds. It’s covered in long, shaggy hair and looks more like a rhinoceros than a horse.

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After discovering the fossilized skull, scientists were blown away because they thought the creature became extinct around 35,000 years ago and this fossil was only 29,000 years old. Believing that it lived longer than expected by migrating across great distances, researchers are now trying to determine how environmental factors may have contributed to its extinction.