“The biblical unicorn could have been an aurochs (a kind of wild ox known to the Assyrians as rimu).7 The aurochs’s horns were very symmetrical and often appeared as one in profile, as can be seen on Ashurnasirpal II’s palace relief and Esarhaddon’s stone prism.8 Fighting rimu was a popular sport for Assyrian kings. On a broken obelisk, for instance, Tiglath-Pileser I boasted of slaying them in the Lebanon mountains.9
“Extinct since about 1627, aurochs, Bos primigenius, were huge bovine creatures.10 Julius Caesar described them in his Gallic Wars as:
“‘a little below the elephant in size, and of the appearance, color, and shape of a bull. Their strength and speed are extraordinary; they spare neither man nor wild beast which they have espied . . . . Not even when taken very young can they be rendered familiar to men and tamed. The size, shape, and appearance of their horns differ much from the horns of our oxen. These they anxiously seek after, and bind at the tips with silver, and use as cups at their most sumptuous entertainments.’11
“The aurochs’ highly prized horns would have been a symbol of great strength to the ancient Bible reader.”
Were you asking whether we have fossils for creatures that existed until the 1600s? I don’t know if we have fossils; perhaps we have actual skeletons and personal accounts like the ones above. They aren’t the horned horses you’re possibly thinking about. The King James Bible writers probably did not have a better English word to use. The Hebrew word was re’em, which may mean strong ox, or buffalo. Interesting, isn’t it?
Oh. God only saw them in profile?
And all this time I thought the bible was the word of god only to find out it is limited by the ignorance of the writers ....