12,400 year-old Frozen Puppy Discovered Intact – Fur and all

What a find! And all because some hunters were originally searching for other (big money) find – woolly mammoth tusks.

(Mammoth Museum of the North-Eastern Federal University/AFP via Getty Images) | Source

Five years ago, some hunters stumbled upon a tiny snout of a puppy that had been frozen in ice since the Pleistocene era – the time period (that began about 1.8 million years ago and lasted until about 11,700 years ago) where the most recent Ice Age occurred. Through that discovery, Russian scientists came upon another puppy in 2015 which they concluded both were probably siblings killed in a landslide on a steep riverbank, sealed in the permafrost and essentially mummified for more than 12,400 years.

Every part of the second puppy was intact and well preserved – including the brain, said to be the first-ever well preserved brain of a Pleistocene canid. The team of scientists who gathered in the Yakutia region in Russia, near the finds, to examine the puppy closer discovered it wasn’t just a mere fossil.

The post-mortem on a carcass of a suspected pet puppy found mummified and dated back 12,400

Siberian Times


Whether they were wolf or dog pups is unclear. But Fyodorov said the remains of mammoths that may have been butchered and burned were found nearby, which could mean humans were there, too.

Source(s): washingtonpost | siberiantimes