First the good news: There really once were living, breathing "unicorns" walking around on Earth -- specifically, in what is now Kazakhstan. The bad news: They weren't the cute, cuddly, magical creatures that all children (and a lot of adults) love and cherish, like the one below. 
 
 Wikimedia Commons An illustration of a fictional unicorn. 
 
 Researchers from Tomsk State University in Russia recently analyzed the well-preserved skull fossils of an Elasmotherium sibiricum, also known as the "Siberian unicorn," that was unearthed in the Pavlodar region of Kazakhstan. 
 
 Scientists previously thought the species went extinct some 350,000 years ago. But based on the new analysis and radiocarbon dating, it seems the massive horned mammals may have endured for hundreds of thousands of years longer than originally thought. 
 
 Google Maps A map of Pavlodar, Kazakhstan. 
 
 When researchers analyzed the E. sibiricum fossils, they found them to be only 29,000 years old, according to findings published in the latest issue of the American Journal of Applied Sciences. 
 
 This suggests the creature may have been around at the same time as humans, since many paleoanthropologists agree that modern humans evolved in Africa about 200,000 years ago. 
 
 (Story continues below image.) 
 
 Wikimedia Commons/Public Domain/Rashevsky, under supervision of A.F. Brant The first published artistic restoration of Elasmotherium sibiricum, in 1878. 
 
 E. sibiricum looked more like a shaggy rhinoceros than a horse. The animals are believed to have stood about six feet tall and 15 feet long, and weighed around four tons. Their horns likely were about seven feet long, according to National Geographic. ||||| Starting in 1996, Alexa Internet has been donating their crawl data to the Internet Archive. Flowing in every day, these data are added to the Wayback Machine after an embargo period. ||||| 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. 
 
 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. ||||| The Quaternary Mammals from Kozhamzhar Locality (Pavlodar Region, Kazakhstan) 
 
 Andrei Valerievich Shpansky, Valentina Nurmagambetovna Aliyassova and Svetlana Anatolievna Ilyina 
 
 DOI : 10.3844/ajassp.2016.189.199 
 
 American Journal of Applied Sciences 
 
 Volume 13, Issue 2 
 
 Pages 189-199 
 
 Abstract 
 
 A new locality of fossil mammals near Kozhamzhar in Pavlodar Priirtysh Region has been described. The article provides the description of the quaternary sediments section found in the outcrop near Kozhamzhar. In the Karginian Age (MIS 3) alluvial deposits of the described locality we found the remains of Elasmotherium sibiricum, Mammuthus ex gr. trogontherii-chosaricus, Mammuthus primigenius, Bison sp. AMS Radiocarbon dating of the Elasmotherium skull gave a young age-26038±356 BP (UBA-30522). The skull of Elasmotherium sibiricum exceeds in size the skull of the mammals from Eastern Europe. The lower jaw of the elephant, considering the size and the morphology of the last dentition teeth, is very close to that of Mammuthus trogontherii chosaricus. 
 
 Copyright 
 
 © 2016 Andrei Valerievich Shpansky, Valentina Nurmagambetovna Aliyassova and Svetlana Anatolievna Ilyina. This is an open access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are credited. ||||| EurekAlert! Editorial Update: A comment regarding the reliability of the radiocarbon dating of the Siberian 'unicorn' described in this release was submitted by Queen's University Belfast researchers who performed the analysis and accepted by the American Journal of Applied Sciences on May 4, 2016: 
 
 Although our laboratory would not normally proceed with analysis for low collagen yield samples, because there was no other sample available and the whole bone nitrogen content and percent carbon were suitable, we did provide the date (UBA30522) but cautioned the authors that it should not be considered reliable. Analysis of further specimens is necessary before this claim is validated. 
 
 The abstract of the comment is available here and the full comment is available here. (Update issued Aug. 13, 2018) 
 
 The beautiful title "Siberian unicorn" belongs to Elasmotherium sibiricum - an elasmotherium Siberian rhinoceros, which as previously thought became extinct 350,000 years ago. Nowadays the researchers of Tomsk State University (TSU) figured out that the "unicorn" found his last refuge "only" 29,000 years ago in Kazakhstan. The article, describing the new location of the fossil mammals in the Pavlodar Irtysh, was published in February 2016 in the American Journal of Applied Science. 
 
 "Most likely, in the south of Western Siberia it was a refúgium, where this rhino had preserved the longest in comparison with the rest of its range. There is another option that it could migrate and dwell for a while on the more southern areas," said Andrey Shpanski, a paleontologist at TSU. These conclusions were made due to research of the rhinocero's skull, found near Kozhamzhar village in Pavlodar region (Kazakhstan). The skull is well preserved: there are some cracks but no trace of pelletization, gnawing, and exfoliation. The fossils of the "unicorn" were examined by radiocarbon AMS-method analysis in the laboratory 14CHRONO Centre for Climate, the Environment, and Chronology (School of Geography, Archaeology and Palaeoecology; Queen's University Belfast; Belfast, UK). It turned out that the skull belonged to the animals that died 29,000 years ago. "Most likely, it was a very large male of very large individual age (teeth not preserved). The dimensions of this rhino today are the biggest of those described in the literature, and the proportion are typical," said the University's scientist. 
 
 Elasmotherium sibiricum supposed to be extinct about 350,000 years ago. Its habitat was the vast territory from the Don River to the east of modern Kazakhstan. Overview Elasmotherium residue findings in the Pavlodar Irtysh showed quite a long existence of these rhinos in the southeast of the West Siberian Plain. An extinction period of the "unicorn" can now be compared with the boundary between Kargin thermochron and Sartan cryochron of late pleistocene (boundary of MIS 3 and 2) in Western Siberia. These data are pushing us for mass radiocarbon studies of mammalian remains that were previously known as ancient and extinct more than 50-100,000 years ago. "Our research makes adjustments in the understanding of the environmental conditions in the geologic time in general. Understanding of the past allows us to make more accurate predictions about natural processes in the near future: it also concerns climate change," summed up Shpanski. 
 
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– Unicorns are real, and they're a lot younger than we thought. Researchers from Russia's Tomsk State University were digging at a fossil site in Kazakhstan when they found bones belonging to the Elasmotherium sibiricum, otherwise known as the "Siberian unicorn," Huffington Post reports. According to IFL Science, this ancient giant rhinoceros, which has a horn protruding from the middle of its head, is thought to be the basis for modern tales of unicorns. The Siberian unicorn is believed to have been about 20 feet long with a 7-foot horn, National Geographic reports. But it wasn't the existence of Elasmotherium sibiricum that caught researchers off guard; it was the age of the bones. Radiocarbon dating found one of the skulls to be only about 29,000 years old, according to a press release. Scientists had long believed the Siberian unicorn went extinct 350,000 years ago. If the team's research—which was published in the American Journal of Applied Sciences—holds up, it means unicorns and humans walked the Earth at the same time, though in different places. Humans are believed to have evolved in Africa about 200,000 years ago. (A unicorn is convincing people to squat to poop.)