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The Unicorn is a iconic symbol of fantasy, appearing in both mythology and modern novels. It is simply a horse with a single, spiral horn erecting from atop its head. How could a creature like this realistically evolve? How close to the stereotypical unicorn can I get using realistic anatomy?
A list of all of the Anatomically Correct questions can be found here
This creature might have actually evolved, if its predecessor had not gone extinct already.
Enter the Siberian Unicorn, which unfortunately looked a bit more like a mammoth with a horn than a horse.
It's not unrealistic at all that this creature might've evolved into a (near) identical representation of our mythical unicorns. The biggest reason why we don't have Unicorns now is because the horn wasn't useful for horses when the horses were evolving. Had the horns been useful, for mating or whatnot, or even through careful breeding of the mutation by humans, we could easily have a unicorn on our hands today.
