In 1663, the partial fossilised skeleton of a woolly rhinoceros was discovered in Germany.
Otto von Guericke, the man who ended up turning these bones over in his hands and trying to work out what the hell to do with them, was no fool. He invented the vacuum pump – and demonstrated it with that rather spectacular stunt where he vacuumed two hemispheres together and then set two teams of horses to try and pull them apart. They couldn’t. But when it came to bones, I don’t think he quite knew what to do with them. He did believe in unicorns though. And … he tried! As any good scientist should.
People have been chuckling at the result for a long time, and it does look more like something out of Calvin & Hobbes than any kind of creature seen outside of a drug haze. But hey – we have to work through these things, right? It was the same with the infamous Crystal Palace dinosaurs. Reconstruction is such a weird art – you have a pile of bones, and from that, you are supposed to work out the physique, life and personality of this creature? It’s an incredible exercise in educated speculation, which is probably why it’s always fascinated me.
It’s not an exact science of hard data and precise reality, it really is an art-form – just one with an exceptional need to mesh with the reality as best we can manage. The more we learn, the more we fumble towards something that … might … maybe … possibly … be kind of a hint of a real creature that lived so long before we were around.
