Re: Mystery Fossil

[Afmayor@aol.com]

In a message dated 3/17/00 9:57:19 AM Eastern Standard Time, 
chris.lavers@nottingham.ac.uk writes:

<< Got a bit of a poser for you. I have a scanned image of a fossil animal
 'found' in a cave near Quedlinberg, Lower Saxony, in 1663. We're not
 allowed to send attachments to the list, but I can send you the file
 directly if you drop me a line.
 
 Apparently the 'discovery' of this beast caused quite a sensation at the
 time. The reconstruction is by no lesser a scientist than Leibniz. It is
 clearly intended to suggest a unicorn, although a distinctly deformed one,
 but which animal(s) contributed the skull and mandible? Does anyone (German
 speakers?) know anything else about this fossil? 
  >>

The famous case of the "unicorn" found in a gypsum sink hole at Quedlinburg, 
Germany, in 1663 is discussed and illustrated in many histories of 
paleontology. For recent refs See eg A. Sutcliffe, On the Track of Ice Age 
Mammals (1985), 29, and E. Thenius and N. Vavra, Fossilien im Volksglauben 
und im Alltag (1996), 31-32. According to Sutcliffe fig 3.1, one 
reconstruction of the "Unicornu fossile" was by published by Valentini in 
1704, an "expert" on unicorns. The animal skeleton was a hybrid created out 
of bones and tusk of a mammoth and possibly a woolly rhinoceros. Sutcliffe 
gives several other examples from that era. 
Thenius reproduces an earlier (1678) reconstruction of the same "Unicorn" 
from Quedlinburg in Abb. 3.30, by Otto von Guericke. Thenius says it was made 
of bones of Mammuthus primigenius. Leibniz studied it in 1749.
Adrienne Mayor

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