In an article posted at Answers in Genesis — a creationist apologetics website dedicated to substantiating the infallible truths found in the Bible — an author cautions that dismissing the one-horned horse known as the unicorn as a mythical beast “is to demean God’s Word.”

Dr. Elizabeth Mitchell, citing several references in the Bible to the fantastical animal that is a favorite of children and fantasy fans, warns that the unicorn did indeed exist writing, “The Bible is clearly describing a real animal.”

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According to Mitchell, there are multiple references to the unicorn in the Bible, including Job 39:9 (“Will the unicorn be willing to serve thee, or abide by thy crib?”) and Isaiah 34:7 (“And the unicorns shall come down with them, and the bullocks with the bulls; and their land shall be soaked with blood, and their dust made fat with fatness“).

Mitchell notes that “modern readers” have difficulties believing the Bible’s unicorns because they “forget that a single-horned feature is not uncommon on God’s menu for animal design. (Consider the rhinoceros and narwhal)”.

Mitchell does concede that the unicorn portrayed in popular fantasy as a silken-maned graceful one-horned horse often accompanied by rainbows may have actually been a type of wild ox known as an auroch.

“The aurochs’s horns were symmetrical and often appeared as one in profile, as can be seen on Ashurnasirpal II’s palace relief and Esarhaddon’s stone prism,” she wrote.

Mitchell concludes by writing, “The unicorn mentioned in the Bible was a powerful animal possessing one or two strong horns—not the fantasy animal that has been popularized in movies and books. Whatever it was, it is now likely extinct like many other animals. To think of the biblical unicorn as a fantasy animal is to demean God’s Word, which is true in every detail.”

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To date paleontologists have yet to discover the fossil remains of a unicorn, however that doesn’t seem to concern the Kentucky-based publishers of Answers in Genesis — including President Ken Ham who promoted the article on Facebook — who reject scientific consensus in subjects ranging from cosmology to archaeology to evolutionary biology, and believe that the Earth was created 6,000 years ago.

Ham’s creationist group is currently suing the state of Kentucky for $18 million in tax rebates for a Noah’s Ark theme park located in Williamston, Kentucky.

According to an email exchange between Kentucky blogger Joe Sonka and a representative for Answers in Genesis, unicorns — along with dragons — are not represented on the replica Noah’s Ark found in the biblical amusement park.