Prehistoric Humans may have shared the land with unicorns, according to researchers who believe an ancient one-horned beast survived much longer than previously thought.  And by "unicorn", they mean "big, giant hairy rhinoceros cousin.  From Siberia".

Researchers from the Tomsk State University in Russia studied a recently unearthed skull of a Elasmotherium sibiricum.  The so-called "Siberian Unicorn" was an impressive animal about two meters tall and four and a half meters from tip to tail.  Its most recognizable feature was its single horn - which is believed to have been much longer than that of a modern rhinoceros. 

It roamed the vast territory from the Don River in Russia to east of modern Kazakhstan - right about where Tomsk State University is now - first emerging in the fossil record around two and a half million years ago.  Conventional wisdom says the Elasmotherium sibiricum died out 350,000 ago.  But the researchers used the radiocarbon Accelerator Mass Spectrometry method and determined it to be about 29,000 years old.  That obliterates the old view.  Modern humans came on to the scene 200,000 years ago, meaning that the two coexisted for many thousands of years.

"Most likely, it was a very large male of very large individual age," said Andrey Shpanski, a paleontologist at Tomsk State University.  "The dimensions of this rhino are the biggest of those described in the literature, and the proportions are typical," he added.

The Tomsk State University report appears in the American Journal of Applied Science.