How The 'Last Siberian Unicorn' Stumped Scientists For Years https://www.forbes.com/sites/trevornace/2016/03/31/last-siberia...

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Scientists recently found remains of an ancient creature, the "Siberian

Unicorn," hundreds of thousands of years after they were believed to be
extinct. These findings were recent published in the American Journal of
Applied Science by researchers from Tomsk State University in Russia and
Pavlodar State Pedagogical Institute in Kazakhstan.

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How The 'Last Siberian Unicorn' Stumped Scientists For Years https://www.forbes.com/sites/trevornace/2016/03/31/last-siberia...

This article follows up on Shaena Montanari's excellent post on this

topic from a Paleontology perspective.

The fossil Elasmotherium sibiricum was previously believed to have gone

extinct approximately 350,000 years ago. However, carbon age dating on
a recently found skull in Kazakhstan puts age at 29,000 years ago. As a
reference point, Homo sapiens (modern humans), date back
approximately 200,000 years ago and the oldest known cave painting is
approximately 32,000 years old. That's a pretty significant span of time
and means that the "Siberian Unicorn" was evolutionarily coincident
with early Homo sapiens.

The "Siberian Unicorn" looked much different than what we depict

unicorns as today. The animal likely had a build closer to a rhinoceros
than a horse, standing 6 feet tall, about 15 feet long, and weighed on the
order of 9,000 pounds. The skull was well preserved and was
quickly measured for radiocarbon dating.

Radiocarbon dating used to determine the age of many fossils is based on

the regular and predictable decay of the 14-carbon (radiocarbon) isotope.
Here's a quick and very high level explanation of radiocarbon dating.
Radiocarbon is created when cosmic rays enter the atmosphere and
interact with atmospheric 14-nitrogen and converts it to the unstable 14-
carbon form.

That carbon then binds with oxygen to create CO2 with an unstable 14-
carbon. This CO2 is inhaled by plants, taken up by oceans, and evenly
distributed throughout the world. When animals eat plants (or eat
animals that eat plants), they take up the radiocarbon. All living forms
take in unstable 14-carbon naturally without harm. Once the living
organism dies, it stops taking in new 14-carbon and the remaining 14-
carbon begins to decay. Thus, scientists can measure the decay of
radiocarbon within a fossil to determine when it last took in 14-carbon.

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How The 'Last Siberian Unicorn' Stumped Scientists For Years https://www.forbes.com/sites/trevornace/2016/03/31/last-siberia...

Now, with the understanding that the "Siberian Unicorn" died

approximately 29,000 years ago, the question remains how did it survive
so much longer than previously thought? One of the research team
members, Andrey Shpanski, believes it may be due to a refuge in Western
Siberia or that it migrated to southern warmer areas. Elasmotherium
sibiricum lived along the Don River east of modern Kazakhstan, however
they may have migrated significant distances along the Western Siberian
Plains.

One difficulty in determining ages of fossils is directly related to the steady

decay of radiocarbon. Radiocarbon has a half life of 5568 years ± 30 years,
meaning that ever 5568 years the amount of remaining 14-carbon is
decreased in half. The difficulty lies when the remaining amount of 14-
carbon drops to levels below which it is difficult to measure by an
Accelerated Mass Spectrometer (AMS). This results in increasingly large
error bars and unreliable age dates. The rule of thumb is that radiocarbon
dating is valid for the past 50,000 years before the data becomes
increasingly unreliable.

The demise of elasmotheres have stumped scientists as new evidence is

consistently proving our current understanding incorrect. The recent

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How The 'Last Siberian Unicorn' Stumped Scientists For Years https://www.forbes.com/sites/trevornace/2016/03/31/last-siberia...

discovery was linked to sediment of Middle to Upper Pleistocene alluvial

deposited commonly associated with riverine flood deposits. Geologists
can use associated sediment ages surrounding the fossil to infer the age of
a fossil. This is the basis of biostratigraphy and a cornerstone in our
understanding of Earth's history. However, fossils can present difficulties
when extinction occurs at different time periods in different locations
around the world. Index fossils are used to define a geologic period in
history and rely on the fossil assemblage to rapidly appear globally and
disappear globally within the stratigraphic record. This allows geologists
to tie appearance and disappearance of the fossils around the world to
relative age dates.

Unfortunately the extinction of Elasmotherium sibiricum has remained

difficult to define. This is in part due to localized extinction at different
periods of time. The recent findings allow geologists and paleontologists
to get one more data point to better define the rise and fall of the "Siberian
Unicorn."

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