Radiocarbon dating of the animal's bones suggested that the extinct species last walked the Earth about 29,000 years ago, according to a study published in the American Journal of Applied Sciences.

photo credit: usnews.com

Unicorns Were Real, and a New Fossil Shows When They Lived

The well-preserved skull probably won't tell us whether their blood had magical properties, though.

According to a study published in the American Journal of Applied Sciences, the Siberian unicorn – Elasmotherium sibiricum – last walked the Earth about 29,000 years ago.

Scientists previously thought the creature with the partially mythical name died out about 350,000 years ago, but a newly discovered fossilized skull reveals it lived here much more recently.

The skull was found in the Pavlodar region of Kazakhstan, and scientists hope it will help shed light on how some members of the species apparently were able to survive as long as they did.

Before you get too excited, though, here's the catch: The Siberian unicorn really looked like more of a rhinoceros than a horse. It reportedly stood about 6 feet 6 inches tall, measured around 15 feet long, and weighed about 8,000 pounds.

As Science Alert explains, "That’s closer to woolly mammoth-sized than horse-sized."

"Siberian Unicorn" Went Extinct Much Later Than We Thought

Researchers working in Kazakhstan report a new fossil site called the Kozhamzhar Locality, which contains the remains of massive mammals including mammoths, steppe elephants, prehistoric bison, and a giant rhinoceros called Elasmotherium sibiricum – which may have inspired the legend of the unicorn. According to findings published in American Journal of Applied Sciences, radiocarbon dating of the extinct rhino bones suggests the species died off tens (or even hundreds) of thousands of years later than we thought.

Photo credit: First published restoration (1878) of E. sibiricum by Rashevsky under supervision of A.F. Brant. Wikimedia

Tomsk State University’s Andrei Shpansky and colleagues studied about 20 fossilized mammal teeth and bones uncovered from an 8-kilometer (5-mile) section of the left bank of the Irtysh River near Kozhamzhar in the Pavlodar Priirtysh Region of Kazakhstan. Residents of Kozhamzhar village have previously found bone fragments in the downstream outcrop, part of which has already been washed away. In fact, the fossils studied here were collected by locals in the late 1980s and brought to the Museum of Nature at Pavlodar State Pedagogical Institute in 2010.

Additionally, the team analyzed the Elasmotherium skull using AMS radiocarbon dating. This yielded a young age of 26,038 (plus or minus 356) years before present, with a calibration age ranging from 28,985 to 27,490 BCE. Not only are these Elasmotherium skulls bigger than that of eastern European elasmotheriums, these giant rhinos also existed for longer in the southeast of the West Siberian Plain.

Siberian Unicorn: Researchers Discover Bone Fragments From Species' Skull in Kazakhstan

Unicorns Were Real, and a New Fossil Shows When They Lived

The well-preserved skull probably won't tell us whether their blood had magical properties, though.