The Magdeburg Unicorn is an alleged Unicorn fossil that is on display at the Museum of Natural History in Magdeburg Germany. The Magdeburg Unicorn is described as bipedal horse-like fossil with little to no body, a horse-like head, a long tail, and a very long horn on its head. The fossil was first discovered in 1663 in Germany and the people that discovered the fossil thought they found a Unicorn however after the reconstruction, they realized that something seemed off. Later, testing was dine on the fossil and it was determined to be the fossil of a Wooly Rhinoceros and not a Unicorn. The Magdeburg Unicorn has been deemed as one of the worst fossil reconstructions of all time but, it still sparks the imagination that Unicorns and other creatures may exist and be out there.

Crowley: Doesn't seem right. Also still weird, he still had one of them.

Magdeburg Unicorn, the 231st Known One.

It's him! it's the Magdeburg Unicorn.

Magdeburg Unicorn

Not a Bionicle thing (although I did use parts from the Enhanced Mata pack for the shoulders), but I've been rotating infamous 1600s paleo-crime the Magdeburg Unicorn in my mind for the past few days, so I made a physically-impossible Lego version (with a random minifigure for scale).

Sometimes I think about the Guericke-Einhorn and smile- It's so goofy! Anyway- What if it were a critter? Here's what I came up with!

trying to get back into arting

Fishy i hope this pleases you

If they ever add some kind of one-horned creature to Minecraft, I will make a mod that adds the Magdeburg unicorn as not just a recreation of the real-life skeleton (as a decoration block), but also as a living mob.

i believe in the magdeburg unicorn

The Magdeburg unicorn [Bad paleontological reconstruction; miscellaneous]

I have a different kind of creature this week, because it's April 1st!

In 1663, quarry workers excavated a bunch of odd skeletons near Quedlinburg, Germany. Otto von Guericke, the mayor of Magdeburg at the time and also a local scientist, identified the reconstructed creature as a ‘unicorn’ in his report in 1678. The creature had a slightly curved horn of 5 ellen (about 2.3m) long. Otto also mentioned that the remains were damaged due to the clumsy removal of the bones by the quarry workers.

In truth, the workers had found the remains of Pleistocene animals, including the front legs of a mammoth, what appears to be a woolly rhinoceros skull and either the tooth of a narwhal or an elephant tusk. The bones are not identified with 100% certainty because the reconstruction became lost to time.

Forty years later, another unicorn horn had been found (this one was actually the tusk of a straight-tusked elephant). Several respected scientists (including Gottfried Leibniz) would eventually confirm that these were indeed the remains of a unicorn. In 1714, Valentine published his somewhat clumsy attempt at a reconstruction of what he believed to be a fossilized unicorn. If palaeontologists or paleobiologists at the time had any theories about the ecology of the creature, they might have been lost to time, as I couldn’t find anything about it. Going by the contemporary illustrations, perhaps the Einhorn might have been assumed to hop around like a kangaroo, or maybe it was a slow walker, dragging its tail behind it.

The Museum für Naturkunde in Magdeberg currently displays the famous model of the reconstruction (a double reconstruction, if you will, for the original reconstruction got lost). Today, the ‘Guericke Einhorn’ is widely used as a textbook example of a bad paleontological reconstruction, though in Guericke’s defense, the mistake wasn’t as obvious back in the 17th century as it is today. Several unusual bones were found closely together and were incorrectly assumed to be part of a singular, puzzling animal, as Guericke obviously didn’t have access to the current knowledge about each of the Einhorn’s component animals.

The Sewecken Hills area actually has a very rich Pleistocene fossil record – the Lampe collection being famously catalogued by Alfred Nehring in 1904 – but at least for the time being, unicorn fossils remain absent from this list.

Sources: Diedrich, C. G., 2021, Unicorn ‘Holotype’ skeleton from the Late Pleistocene spotted hyena den site Sewecken-Berge (Germany), Acta Zoologica, 104(1), pp.1-70. Van Kolfschoten, T., 2021, The woolly rhinoceros from Seweckenberge near Quedlinburg (Germany), in: S. Gaudzinski-Windheuser, O. Jöris, The Beef behind all Possible Pasts, pp. 39-48. DOI:10.11588/propylaeum.868.c11306 (image 1: image on the left: a 2011 redrawing by Elke Grönig of Leibnitz’ 1749 illustration. Right: 2012 drawing by George Teichmann based on the famous reconstruction) (image source 2: Reddit user and_so_forth)

Presenting The Magdeburg Unicorn. You're welcome.

Ladies and gentlemen, I give you the worst fossil reconstruction in history: The Magdeburg Unicorn.

In 1663, Prussian scientist Otto von Geuricke found the partial remains of a woolly rhinoceros and a tusk from a narwhale, and believed them to be from a unicorn.

His ridiculous reconstruction can still be viewed today at the Museum für Naturkunde in Magdeburg, Germany.

what the fuck is this

well the skeleton behind claire really reminds me of the magdeburg unicorn so I guess it's a joke. I still dont understand

Presenting The Magdeburg Unicorn. You're welcome.

New Short is up on YouTube! ✨

Introducing the worst fossil reconstruction in history: the Magdeburg Unicorn. Why does this thing exist? And how?