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The Klondike region in Canada is known for its gold, but other notable ancient treasures have been discovered in the permafrost.
Two ice age mammals, a wolf cub and a caribou, were discovered by gold miners in the area in 2016 and unveiled Thursday at a ceremony in Dawson, Yukon Territory.
Fur, skin and muscle tissues are extremely seldom kept in the fossil record, but all three are present on these radiocarbon-dated specimens dating back more than 50,000 years.
The Cub is preserved in its entirety, including exceptional details on the head, tail, legs, skin and hair. The caribou calf is partially preserved, the head, torso and two forelimbs intact.
"To our knowledge, this is the only Icewalker iceworld in the world," said Grant Zazula, a local paleontologist working with the Yukon government, who also noted the support of the mining community. local mining.
Julie Meachen, a carnivorous morphologist who works with ice age mammals at Des Moines University and will be doing research on the Cub soon, said, "When Grant sent me the photos and m & # 39; asked to participate, I was somehow out of me.
"We want to do an old DNA test to see who it is linked to and look at its microbiome to see if there are still intestinal bacteria."
Other researchers from around the world have reacted with the same excitement to the discovery of this former predator and its prey, which are sufficiently well preserved to allow future research on such factors as the cause of death diet, health, age and genetics.
Elsa Panciroli, paleontologist at the University of Edinburgh, said: "The bones of ice age wolves are relatively common in the Yukon, but having a preserved animal with skin and fur is simply exceptional. It is an evocative glimpse of the world of the ice age.
Thomas Higham, an archeology dating expert at Oxford University, said: "The remains are very evocative because they allow us to be in direct contact with animals tens of thousands of years old and who have yet much more recent. "
It is believed that the wolf and caribou inhabited a dry tundra landscape alongside other animals such as wooly mammoths.
According to Jan Zalasiewicz, a paleobiologist at the University of Leicester, the preservation of skin and fur suggests that they were living in a cold period. "A drier, more dry climate would help preserve skin and fur, and that usually happens when the climate gets colder," he said. "The trick here is to find a way to lyophilize the carcass in these arid conditions and to bury it … you have to find a way to dry it and put it in the freezer very quickly."
Panciroli said, "It is hoped that further research on this" aphid "could yield an old DNA" that could provide new information about the wolf populations that lived in the Yukon at that time. "For example, where do they come from and how are they related to modern wolves?
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