A gold miner has found an almost intact mummified wolf pup in Canada’s Yukon region. The animal was thawed from a layer of ice and appears to be 57,000 years old. The pup has been called Zhùr by the locals of Yukon, which means ‘wolf’ in their language
“It is the most complete wolf mummy ever,” says one of the researchers who examined the mummy. The only thing this animal is missing are the eyes.
Because the wolf cub is so well preserved, biologists can learn a lot about the life of prehistoric wolves like Zhùr. They noticed that the puppy ate a lot of salmon, while it was thought that these wolves eat a lot of meat. Zhùr lived close to water and that will have affected her diet, the researchers write in the scientific journal Current Biology.
Such finds are very rare. The animal must die in a favorable place and then be covered with ice and frozen within a very short time. If the carcass is left uncovered on the tundra for too long, the body will perish or be eaten by other animals.
More such mummies may be found due to climate change. Zhùr was in a layer of permafrost, or always frozen ground. In September, an almost intact cave bear corpse was found in Siberia, Russia. It has been in the ice for 39,500 years.
Pup may have been in a hole that collapsed
One question the scientists wanted to answer is how the animal must have died in order to be found in this state so much later. The animal was believed to be seven weeks old when it died and was in a wolf den at the time. That hole probably collapsed, causing the young to die almost immediately.
If it happened like this, it is striking that only one young has been found. Where the mother wolf and the rest of the puppies would have been is not clear. Zhùr may have been the only pup or the rest may not have been in the hole when it collapsed.
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