It is a female, a 57,000-year-old wolf cub that has been discovered in the Yukon, Canada. The mummy of a prehistoric wolf was found by a gold miner in Canada, blowing up a wall of frozen mud in Yukon province. While sweeping through the mud, he found what appeared to be an ancient fossil. It turned out to be a remarkably well-preserved wolf cub that had died about 57,000 years ago.
Secrets uncovered
This mummified creature was a gray wolf ( Canis lupus ) and their analysis has revealed how it died and how it ended up alone on the ice so long ago. Various analyzes, including radiocarbon dating, DNA sampling, and measurements of oxygen isotope levels in the body, have revealed information as to when the puppy died. X-rays of the skeleton and teeth also revealed that Zhùr (as the cub has been baptized and which means “wolf” in the Hän language of the local Tr’ondëk Hwëch’in people) was only 7 weeks old when he met premature death.
“He is the most complete wolf specimen ever found in the ice age. All of his soft tissue, his hair, his skin, even his little nose is still there. It is complete, basically 100% intact; only his eyes are missing. And that’s really weird, “ explains Julie Meachen, associate professor of anatomy at Des Moines University in Iowa and co-author of the work published in the journal Current Biology. “The fact that it is so complete allowed us to carry out many lines of research on her to basically rebuild her life.”
The specimen measures 40 cm from the snout to the base of the tail and is in an “exceptional” state of conservation, from the papilla of the lips to the skin and coat. Zhùr will be exhibited at the Yukon Beringia Interpretation Center in Whitehorse, the capital of the Yukon Territory in northwestern Canada.
It takes a ‘unique combination of circumstances’ to produce a permafrost mummy. ” The animal has to die in a permafrost place, where the ground is frozen all the time, and they have to be buried very quickly, like any other fossilization process. If it stays too long in the frozen tundra, it will decompose or be eaten.” , the researchers explain.
Scientists believe that the defenseless puppy was not suffering at the time of his death. His den probably collapsed and he died instantly but it is impossible to know why they have only found this puppy without siblings or mother. Apparently, the wolf was well fed and was about 7 weeks old.
The researchers reconstructed Zhùr’s mitochondrial genome, the genome that is passed along the maternal line, finding similarities to the Beringia wolves, an extinct group that lived in ancient Yukon and Alaska, and the Russian gray wolf. This cub’s relationship with individuals from North America and Eurasia represents proof of ancient continental mixing across the Bering Bridge , an ancient land bridge that once connected Alaska and Russia.
“A small advantage of climate change is that we are going to find more of these mummies as the permafrost melts,” says Meachen. “That’s a good way for science to better rebuild that time, but it also shows us how much our planet is warming. We really have to be careful.”
Referencia: Meachen, Julie and Wooller, Matthew J. and Barst, Benjamin D. and Funck, Juliette and Crann, Carley and Heath, Jess and Cassatt-Johnstone, Molly and Shapiro, Beth and Hall, Elizabeth and Hewitson, Susan and Zazula, Grant, Zhur: A Mummified Pleistocene Gray Wolf Pup ( Canis lupus) from Yukon Territory, Canada. Available at SSRN: https://ssrn.com/abstract=3678693 or http://dx.doi.org/10.2139/ssrn.3678693
