This mummified wolf puppy found in Yukon, Canada is 57,000 years old
Yukon Government
The ivory hunters knew they had found something special. It was 2020, and they were tunneling along the banks of the Badiyarika River in Siberia. The permanently frozen soil of the river basin is a hunting ground rich in wool mammoth tusks and has earned a considerable price in the Chinese ivory market. But sometimes, rarer treasures appear. It is a more complete ruin of mammoths and other long-term animals.
But this was on another planet. Inside the block of ice, Proctor found a furry corpse, unlike what he had seen before. They warn the scientists and eventually reached the ice block Alexei Ropachin at the Boliciaq Paleontology Institute in Moscow for analysis. Last year, he and his team said that the body was Boy Scimitar’s Tooth Catan animal that is only associated with live cats, and is now hunted to avoid predators.
“For the first time in paleontological history, the emergence of extinct mammals with no analogues in modern fauna is being studied,” says Lopachin. “That’s a wonderful feeling.”
And it may become more familiar to paleontologists over the next few years. Frozen mummies have emerged from permafrost in Russia and North America for two centuries, but entered the discovery of the Golden Age about 15 years ago. That was when some of the most notable wool mammoth mummies were revealed.
