Scientists Dug Out Wolf Trapped In Ice For 44,000 Years And It Looks Almost Untouched
Picture a hulking bear scampering on the vast icescape. All of a sudden, it slips on a melting patch and ends up falling inside a glacial lake whose numbing waters suffocate her. Over the years, the layers of ice sweep a blanket over the dead bear. Thus, mummies of several ancient animals like bears, bison, wolves, mammoths, rodents, fish-lizards, etc., remain frozen in time. According to a study published in the Encyclopaedia of Archaeology, these mummies are precious repositories brimming with cosmic information that could reveal to scientists the mysteries and the histories of the universe.
During a 2021 expedition scientists undertook through the immense icy expanse of Siberia, stretching from the South to the Arctic, they dug out the mummy of an ancient adult male wolf, according to a press release. Analysis revealed that the wolf had been frozen in its tomb for 44,000 years, which means it is the oldest wolf belonging to the Ice Age. The team hauled its dead body into their laboratory and conducted a deep post-mortem analysis to unlock the full picture of its past life as well as the geological and biological history of this landscape.
This is the first Ice Age wolf, with its body found fully intact, not just its internal organs, but also the soft tissues and the genetic material, a.k.a. DNA. Ice, it seems, had preserved the mummy with an uncanny finesse. The permafrost likely acted as a freezer that pressed a pause button on the growth of bacterial microbes in the dead wolf’s body. The water dried up, and the bacterial breakdown slowed down, leaving the carcass and the internal organs to remain as they were in the moment when he froze. Permafrost is also known to limit the supply of oxygen and water, the very ingredients that microbes in an animal’s body need to wake up and breed.
The team cut open and ripped the wolf’s mummy to carry out the post-mortem. They studied bacteria in his gut to examine what he ate as well as the diet of his victims, whose remains were still preserved in his stomach. Apart from gut bacteria, they investigated his premolar tooth to determine his biological age and the soft tissues to reconstruct his diet patterns, microdata, and genetic material, further comparing this information with that of the modern-day wolves. This comparison would help them design an evolutionary family tree spanning from the ancient Ice Age wolf to the present-day species.
The wolf was discovered by a river in the Republic of Sakha, also called Yakutia. Post-mortem analysis revealed that he lived about 44,000 years ago, during the late Pleistocene. This wolf, someday, could have slipped through a crack and gotten frozen in this time capsule. It is surprising to imagine that some locals stumbled upon his body sealed in ice along a riverbank in 2021. The results his body revealed could change the understanding they had of the Ice Age predators, according to Albert Protopopov of the Academy of Sciences of Yakutia.
Another aspect that came to light during the investigation of his stomach was the presence of viruses. Artemy Goncharov, a virus expert from Russia, explained that living bacteria can survive for thousands of years, like frozen witnesses of those ancient times. Within their iced carcasses, they carry valuable information about ancient parasites, microtears, and healed fractures, also offering clues to how the animal survived stress, fights, and injuries in the thick of the wild, as Earth.com points out.
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