28,000-year-old frozen cub found in Siberian Arctic cave
The cub’s fur and even the whiskers still seem intact and undamaged. Her teeth, skin, soft tissues and organs are mummified but all intact
A cave lion cub was found frozen deep in the Siberian Arctic. The cub’s fur and even the whiskers still seem intact and undamaged. Her teeth, skin, soft tissues and organs are mummified but all intact.
She is said to have breathed her last around some 28,000 years ago but her claws are still sharp enough as if she was just asleep for years together.
The remarkable permafrost Siberian Simba, nicknamed Sparta, was one of two baby cave lions – extinct big cats that used to roam widely across the northern hemisphere – found in 2017 and 2018 by mammoth tusk hunters on the banks of the Semyuelyakh River in Russia’s Far East.
Initially, the scientists thought the two cubs were siblings, as they were found just 15 metres (49 feet) apart, but a new study found that they differ in age by around 15,000 years. Boris, as the second cub is known, is 43,448 years old, according to radiocarbon dating.
“Sparta is probably the best preserved Ice Age animal ever found, and is more or less undamaged apart from the fur being a bit ruffled. She even had the whiskers preserved. Boris is a bit more damaged, but still pretty good,” said Love Dalen, a professor of evolutionary genetics at the Centre for Paleogenetics in Stockholm, Sweden, and an author of a new study on the cubs.
This CAVE LION cub is arguably the best preserved #iceage animal ever found!
It's name is Sparta.
In a paper published today with colleagues from 🇷🇺 🇯🇵 & 🇫🇷, we use DNA & 14C to show that it's a female cub that died c 28,000 years ago.
Read more here:https://t.co/Vc2VI7VFfJ pic.twitter.com/NkXTFCvsyB
— Centre for Palaeogenetics (@CpgSthlm) August 4, 2021
Both cubs were just one or two months old when they perished, the study said. However, it is not clear how the cubs died. But the research team confirmed that there were no signs of them being killed by a predator.
Computed tomography scans showed skull damage, dislocation of ribs, and other distortions in their skeletons. “Given their preservation, they must have been buried very quickly. So, maybe they died in a mudslide, or fell into a crack in the permafrost,” Dalen said and added, “Permafrost forms large cracks due to seasonal thawing and freezing.”
He further added that the next step would be to sequence the DNA of Sparta, which could reveal the evolutionary history of the cave lion, the population size and its unique genetic features.
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