USA HISTORY

Detailed explanation-1: -Fit for the pages of a medieval bestiary, the stories of the terrestrial unicorn not only merge traits of multiple animals, but they also fuse fact with fiction. The re’em is now often translated as an ox, and it is widely accepted that Polo’s unicorn was an Indonesian rhinoceros.

Detailed explanation-2: -On his trip to China, Marco Polo was looking for unicorns. When he came across an animal he had never seen or heard of before–a rhinoceros–he assumed the animal was a unicorn, because it roughly fit his conception of what a unicorn should look like by having a horn on its head.

Detailed explanation-3: -“Marco Polo accepted that the rhinoceroses he saw in Sumatra in 1292 were unicorns, but he admitted that they were not in the least like the creatures of European fancy.

Detailed explanation-4: -One of the first Europeans to glimpse an Asian rhinoceros, Polo thought the horned beasts were unicorns.

Detailed explanation-5: -A giant rhino that may have been the origin of the unicorn myth survived until at least 39, 000 years ago-much longer than previously thought. Known as the Siberian unicorn, the animal had a long horn on its nose, and roamed the grasslands of Eurasia.