14,000-year-old puppy, whose perfectly preserved body was found in Russia, nibbled on a woolly rhino for its last meal

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Russian researchers first searched the preserved, hairy body of the dog – which could be a dog or a wolf – at a site in Tumat, Siberia, in 2011.

Inside the stomach of the 14,000 year old puppy was a piece of hairy tissue. At first, scientists assumed that the fragment belonged to a cave lion, due to its thin yellow fur. But tests carried out by experts at the Stockholm Natural History Museum told a different story.

“When they got the DNA, it didn’t look like a cave lion,” said Love Dalen, professor of evolutionary genetics at the Center for Palaeogenetics, a joint venture between Stockholm University and the Swedish Museum of natural History.

“We have a reference database and mitochondrial DNA from all the mammals, so we checked the sequence data against that and the results that came back – it was an almost perfect match for the woolly rhinos.” said Dalen.

“It’s totally unknown. I don’t know of any Ice Age carnivores where they found pieces of tissue inside,” he said.

After radiocarbon dating the sample, experts determined that rhino skin was around 14,400 years old.

“This puppy, we already know, is dated to around 14,000 years ago. We also know that the woolly rhino became extinct 14,000 years ago. So, potentially, this puppy ate one of the last remaining woolly rhino, ”he said.

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Scientists don’t know how the puppy got a piece of rhino in his stomach.

Edana Lord, a doctoral student at the Center for Palaeogenetics who co-wrote an article on the disappearance of the woolly rhino, told CNN that the creatures would have been roughly the same size as the modern white rhino – which makes it unlikely that the puppy killed the beast itself.

The researchers also found it curious that the puppy died soon after eating the rhino.

“This puppy must have died very soon after eating the rhino because it is not very digested,” Dalen told CNN.

“We don’t know if it was a wolf, but if it was a wolf cub, maybe he ran into a baby rhino that was dead, or the (adult) wolf ate the baby rhino,” he said. he speculated. “Maybe by eating it the mother rhino got her revenge.”

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