All kinds of ancient animals frozen in the permafrost are emerging as global warming temperatures melt the permafrost. The latest discovery is a 28,000-year-old female cave lion cub named Sparta, found near-perfect in the Siberian Arctic with even her whiskers intact.
Researchers believe Sparta is the best-preserved Ice Age animal ever discovered. Studying these creatures could help scientists find ways to improve the cryopreservation of cells, tissues, and organs, since humans cannot preserve organs and tissues for such a considerable time.
Local mammoth tusk collectors discovered Sparta, along with another mummified baby cave lion named Boris, on the banks of the Semyuelyakh River in Far Eastern Russia. Boris, a male cub, was discovered in 2017 by mammoth tusk collector Boris Berezhnev and Sparta was found in 2018. Scientists analyzed their fossil remains and revealed the details in a report published in the journal Quaternary.
The scientists initially suspected the two fossilized cubs (believed to be between one and two months old when they died) were from the same litter as they were discovered only 15m away from one another.
However, the study found that they’re far from siblings, as they differ in age by approximately 15,000 years. According to radiocarbon dating, Boris dates back more than 43,000 years, while Sparta dates about 28,000 years ago.
The extinct cave lions were a relative of the African lions that exist today and were widely spread in eastern Siberia during the Late Pleistocene period. The report highlights that their furs were well preserved, with a long, thick fur undercoat that likely helped them adapt to the cold and harsh conditions of the region. In addition, the researchers noted that the cubs’ coat was “similar but not identical to that of the modern African lion cub.”
The report also details how Sparta was preserved in the permafrost in near-perfect condition. The female cub’s fur is mostly intact, including skin, soft tissue, organs, and teeth. “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,” explained Love Dalen, the study’s author and an evolutionary genetics professor at the Center for Palaeogenetics in Stockholm, Sweden.
Furthermore, Sparta’s skeleton was entirely preserved, while Boris’s skeleton was slightly deformed because of pressure from the earth’s mass, but overall, it was still in good condition. “Boris is a bit more damaged but still pretty good,” Dalen added.
Dalen told Changing America:
Sparta is an incredibly well-preserved animal, and it’s amazing to think that she belonged to a species of large carnivore that has been extinct for more than 10,000 years!
Given the specimen’s superb preservation, the researchers suspect that the two cave lions were buried very quickly and possibly died in a mudslide or fell into a crack in the permafrost, which would explain why predators and scavengers didn’t find their bodies.
The report theorized:
That is why we do not see any damage to the mummies that could have been inflicted by them. Maybe the cubs were buried under the ground following a landslide, and their bodies were deformed by the earth’s mass and permafrost features and froze quickly to become mummies.
The research team includes Russian, UK, and Japanese scientists. They claimed that the site where the mummies were discovered also held the remains of typical fauna from the region during the last Ice Age, including a brown bear, woolly mammoth, woolly rhinoceros, Lena horse, steppe bison reindeer, and wolf.
As global temperatures rise, all kinds of ancient creatures emerge from the melting permafrost, like a horror movie.
However, not all of them are lifeless. For example, microscopic 24,000-year-old multicellular invertebrates called Bdelloid rotifers, a class of rotifers entirely made up of females, were able to spring back to life and reproduce in the warmth of the laboratory. These microscopic worm-like creatures – labeled an “evolutionary scandal” by biologists for having thrived for millions of years without having sex – would have been under giant woolly creatures’ feet, like the woolly rhino.
In addition, scientists led by a team from Ohio State University identified dozens of viruses from nearly-15,000-year-old ice samples collected from Tibetan glaciers. Remarkably, most of these unearthed species were unknown to science, potentially providing insight into the history of viral evolution.
When it comes to preserving history, glaciers are ideal because they trap whatever was in the atmosphere around them when each layer froze. As a result, these layers accumulate year after year, creating a sort of timeline. Scientists drill and study ice cores from these glaciers to learn more about ancient climates, climate change, the atmosphere, and the kinds of life and gases that existed at various points in history.
In March 2020, scientists in Hamburg found that resettling massive herds of large herbivores, including reindeer, horses, and bison, could save up to 80% of the world’s permafrost soils until 2100.
