The awesome head of a giant wolf over 30 000 years old found in Siberia with the fangs and brain intact

His fangs and even his brain are incredibly preserved.

And it is the first intact head of an adult wolf of the ice age.

The head was found in Siberia and belonged to a wolf that lived in the Pleistocene, more than 30,000 years ago.

Researchers from Russia, Sweden and Japan have studied this discovery and presented it to the public during an exhibition at the National Museum of Science and Innovation in Tokyo.

The head measures 40 cm long and is much larger than that of a current wolf, which measures between 23 and 28 cm.

Scientists hope that these remains will help to understand what happened to this great predator who lived in Europe and Asia with species such as the woolly mammoth.

How did you find the head?

As parts of the permafrost of Siberia melt due to climate change, more and more extraordinary remains are being discovered.

One of the best-known discoveries is that of Yuka, a very hairy mammoth baby that was perfectly preserved in 2011 and lived 28,000 years ago in the Yakutia region.

The wolf 's head was found last year in the same area, on the Tirekhtyakh River, by local mammoth tusk researchers.

After China banned the sale of statuettes and other ivory products from elephant tusks, applicants for mammoth tusks in the Siberian permafrost seized the opportunity of a lucrative business.

He went in search of fangs striking the wolf's head and handed them to Albert Protopopov, head of the Mammoth Studies Department at the Yakoutia Academy of Sciences.

How was the age of the remains determined?

Protopopov did not know at the beginning how old were the remains; he therefore contacted experts in Sweden.

David Stanton, a paleogenetic researcher of evolution at the Museum of Natural History of Science in Sweden, was one of the scientists who determined the age of the head found in Siberia.

"We have radiocarbon dated a piece of cloth with an American company called Beta Analytic," Stanton told BBC Mundo.

"The age we determined was between 32,560 and 31,480 years old (with a 95% certainty) .Another independent team has reached the value of 32,705 to 31,690 years old. certainty that the specimen is 32,000 years old, with a margin of error not exceeding 500 years ".

DNA

Protopopov also collaborated with the Jikei University School of Medicine in Tokyo, where a head scan was performed to reveal the details of the tissues.

Scientists will now study the DNA of the animal, to compare it to that of the current wolves.

The wolf found in Siberia had stronger fangs than those of the present wolves and it is thought that he could hunt very large animals such as bison and horses.

"The next step is to try to extract DNA from the wolf's remains. The difficulty is that the DNA of such ancient specimens is often damaged," Stanton told BBC World.

"We are trying to extract the DNA without much success from the skin, we will now try to extract teeth, if we get a good quality DNA, we will try to sequence the genome of the wolf." , which will allow us to try to answer different questions ".

"For example, what is the relationship between these extinct wolves and the current wolves?" These extinct wolves have crossed with the current wolves and do they have the current genes of these wolves? Can we find the reasons in the genome? " They go out? "

Stanton noted that one of the possibilities is that wolves have disappeared for weather reasons.

"If this is the case, a better understanding of these extinctions can help us predict and prevent future extinctions due to climate change."

The researchers hope that the remains will also provide clues to the Pleistocene fauna.

The head could also help to understand the evolutionary past of species such as the current dogs and wolves, who would have separated from a common ancestor at least 27,000 years ago.

The discovery of the head is crucial for Stanton.

"It is very rare to find specimens with this level of conservation, so this head is very useful, we think it is a specimen of" Pleistocene steppe wolf ", a wolf line that has disappeared. probably between 20,000 and 30,000 years old ".

"Extraordinary specimens like this one can give us information about why this lineage went extinct while modern wolves survived."