
Siberian unicorns existed at same time as humans, new fossils confirm - DamienSF
http://www.syracuse.com/us-news/index.ssf/2016/03/siberian_unicorn_real_new_fossil_discovered.html
======
semi-extrinsic
My bullshit detector is going off big time here: a popsci article citing
another popsci article on phys.org, which cites the original paper but with a
broken DOI link, and the original paper being published in what looks like a
really crappy journal, whose publisher is on Beall's list of predatory
publishers.

Maaaybe the science is good, I don't know since I can't find the paper. But if
it's good science, and this is a new and cool result, why is it published in a
really crappy journal?

Edit: as itcrowd below says, and the paper conclusions also state, this study
only confirms the dating of these remains. The first paper giving this dating
is from 2014. Otherwise the paper looks like decent science, although I'm not
a paleontologist. Publishing non-novel results is very difficult, and I now
believe this is the reason for the choice of journal.

~~~
tosseraccount
Link works for me:
[http://thescipub.com/PDF/ajassp.2016.189.199.pdf](http://thescipub.com/PDF/ajassp.2016.189.199.pdf)

[http://thescipub.com/abstract/10.3844/ajassp.2016.189.199](http://thescipub.com/abstract/10.3844/ajassp.2016.189.199)

~~~
semi-extrinsic
The DOI link doesn't:
[http://dx.doi.org/10.3844/ajassp.2016.189.199](http://dx.doi.org/10.3844/ajassp.2016.189.199)

------
itcrowd
I know the title says that this fossil _confirms_ that the species were alive
much later than anticipated, but it is not quite clear from the text of the
article on Syracuse (or I misread?) that there was an earlier discovery of
this species [with the same young age]. Below are the relevant passages from
the scientific article.

From the discussion:

> _Earlier, a series of the same young radiocarbon dates was obtained by our
> colleagues from Ekaterinburg (Kosintsev, 2014) on the bones of
> elasmotheriums from localities southwest of the West Siberian Plain._

From the conclusion:

> _Our study following the data by Kosintsev (2014) confirmed the longer
> existence of Elasmotherium sibiricum within the territory of the West
> Siberian Plain._

edit: link to scientific article is in the Syracuse article, or here [pdf
warning]:
[http://thescipub.com/PDF/ajassp.2016.189.199.pdf](http://thescipub.com/PDF/ajassp.2016.189.199.pdf)

~~~
stephenboyd
It was named in 1808, so it must have been discovered before then.

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Elasmotherium#Discovery](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Elasmotherium#Discovery)

The news is about the recent finding of a skull in Siberia, which they were
able to use to date the species to only 29,000 years ago.

~~~
itcrowd
Sorry, my post might not have been clear enough. What I meant is that
(Kosintev, 2014) already dated the species to ~30,000 years old two years ago.
This new publication merely confirms that.

------
sudojudo
Are these fossils the origin of the unicorn myth? None of the articles I've
stumbled across have an image of the actual fossil, I'm curious how similar it
is to a horse skull. They were surely extinct well before the mythology, but
their bones were around. The unicorn myth comes from the Indus Valley, which
isn't too far away, relatively speaking.

Reminds me of the ancient Greeks turning elephant skulls on Crete into the
cyclops.

~~~
itcrowd
There are images of a single skull fragment in this scientific article, but
it's just one piece from multiple angles.

------
japaget
I'm a little skeptical of this since it is not appearing in a major national
publication such as the New York Times, a peer-reviewed journal such as
Nature, or a well-respected blog such as Laelaps. Also, it is too close to
April Fools Day to be certain it was mean to be taken seriously.

~~~
tosseraccount
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Elasmotherium](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Elasmotherium)

------
mmastrac
April fool's day reminder: give it a couple of days, assume it's a joke until
then.

------
daveguy
There is no way that animal is worth $1billion. Not even close to a unicorn.

------
mchahn
This is great. I can now win bets that unicorns were real.

~~~
tosseraccount
They're short and fat, and people call them rhinos.

~~~
dogma1138
Don't rhinos have two horns?

