They find 57,000-year-old wolf cub mummified

A Canadian gold miner discovered, while working in frozen mud in the Yukon, a perfectly preserved Cub that has been locked in permafrost for 57,000 years.

The remarkable condition of the cub, named Zhùr by the local Tr’ondëk Hwëch’in, has given researchers insight into his age, lifestyle and relationship to modern wolves, as published in the journal ‘ Current Biology ”.

“This is the most complete wolf mummy ever found. It’s basically 100% intact, the only thing missing are the eyes, ”says first author Julie Meachen, associate professor of anatomy at Des Moines University. And the fact that it’s so complete has allowed us to do so much research on her to fundamentally rebuild her life. “

One of the biggest questions researchers tried to answer about Zhùr was how it ended up being preserved in permafrost, because it takes a unique combination of circumstances to produce a permafrost mummy.

“It is rare to find these mummies in the Yukon. The animal has to die in a place of permafrost, where the ground is frozen all the time, and they have to be buried very quickly, like any other fossilization process, ”says Meachen. too long in the frozen tundra, it will decompose or be eaten. “

Another important factor is how the wolf died. Animals that die slowly or are hunted by predators are less likely to be found intact. “We believe she was in her lair and died instantly from the cave collapse,” Meachen says. “Our data showed that she was not hungry and that she was about 7 weeks old when she died, so we feel a little better knowing the poor thing didn’t. suffered for a long time. “

In addition to knowing how Zhùr died, the team was also able to analyze his diet, which was heavily influenced by how close he lived to water. “Normally when you think of wolves in the Ice Age you think of them eating bison or muskox or other large animals on earth, but one thing that surprised us is that it ate aquatic resources, especially salmon, ”he explains.

Analysis of Zhùr’s genome also confirmed that he is descended from ancient wolves from Russia, Siberia and Alaska, who are also the ancestors of modern wolves. Although Zhùr’s analysis has given researchers many answers about the wolves of the past, some questions remain about Zhùr and his family.

“We were asked why she was the only wolf found in the den and what happened to her mother or brothers,” Meachen recalls. “It could be that she was an unmarried lion cub. Or the other wolves weren’t in the den during the collapse. Unfortunately, we’ll never know.”

The specimen is of particular importance to the local Tr’ondëk Hwëch’in, who agreed to put Zhùr on display at the Yukon Beringia Interpretive Center in Whitehorse. It’s clean and well-maintained, so it will stay intact for years to come, so you can get to other places in the Yukon as well. And the research team is predicting that more and more permafrost mummies could be found in the years to come.

“A small benefit of climate change is that we’re going to find more of these mummies as the permafrost melts,” Meachen admits. “It’s a good way for science to better reconstruct this era, but it also shows us how much it is warming our planet. We really have to be careful,” he warns.