In case you’ve been living under a rock, here’s some news for you: the climate crisis is here, it’s real, and it’s having very tangible, detrimental effects on this beautiful planet we call home.

Take the coral reefs for instance. The recent announcement that (thanks in large part to sustained negligence on the part of our policymakers and the fossil-fuel giants that pay them) we’ve hit the first of the climate tipping points was met by devastation by many.

Not just because tipping points are a no-going-back, domino style situation, but because the death of our coral reefs is a travesty for the ecosystems and natural beauty and brilliance of this planet.

But occasionally, amid all the awfulness, something quite fascinating does appear as a result of the climate emergency – and in the coldest depths of Russia, something fascinating did quite literally ‘appear’ recently.

That’s according to Yakutia local Roman Romanov, who was enjoying a subzero stroll last year, when he came across the tip of what turned out to be an enormous fossil.

After digging it up, the sheer size of the skull and its enormous horn became apparent, but it wasn’t until researchers at Yakutsk’s Mammoth Museum inspected the skull and measured the horn at 5 feet and five inches, that the importance of this find came to light.

Not only was this skull, which had emerged out of melting permafrost where it had been buried for tens of thousands of years, huge, it was also highly significant to the understanding of the woolly rhino species.

Not only was the horn magnificent, it was the longest one ever discovered.

According to a recent study, which was published in the Journal of Zoology, the previous longest horn was a whole two inches smaller, astounding researcher Ruslan Belyaev in more ways than one, as he explained in an interview with National Geographic:

“We were surprised by how many different conclusions we were able to draw from studying this record-breaking horn. For the first time, we were able to show that in the harsh conditions of the Ice Age, woolly rhinos could live as long as modern species.”

Since woolly rhinos went extinct around 14,000 years ago, the appearance of this magnificent female rhino horn is a fascinating reminder of the creatures who walked the Earth before us.

And as the Earth’s temperature sadly keeps increasing, it’s unlikely that this will be the last find from the melting tundra – at the expense of the planet and all the species who live here.

If you thought that was interesting, you might like to read a story that reveals Earth’s priciest precious metal isn’t gold or platinum and costs over $10,000 an ounce!