Scientists discover intact Ice Age woolly rhino in Siberia

Russian researchers have just announced the discovery of a remarkably well-preserved woolly rhinoceros that was excavated in August 2020.

According to The Siberian Times, the specimen is between 20,000 and 50,000 years old, and was found in such pristine condition that much of its internal organs were still intact. Some are calling this the best-preserved carcass of its kind.

The frozen Siberian tundra offers the perfect conditions to preserve Ice Age remnants like this, while climate change has seen a slew of them melt to the surface. In recent years, experts in Yakutia, Siberia have excavated everything from ancient lion cubs and bison to a horse and woolly mammoths.

Scientists estimate that this latest discovery is about 80 percent undamaged. Indeed, all of its limbs, fur, and most of its teeth remain intact. Scientists are even confident that they can determine the creature’s last meal.

“The young rhino was between three and four years old and lived separately from its mother when it died, most likely by drowning,” said Dr. Valery Plotnikov from Yakutia’s Academy of Sciences. “The gender of the animal is still unknown… The rhino has a very thick short underfur, very likely it died in the summer.”

The specimen was unearthed not too far from where Sasha, the world’s only baby woolly rhino, was discovered in 2014. Sasha is believed to be about 34,000 years old and was around seven months old when she died.

Sasha’s discovery first showed scientists that even baby woolly rhinos had fur, and this latest discovery has only strengthened that theory.

“We have learned that woolly rhinoceroses were covered in very thick hair,” said Dr. Plotnikov of Sasha. “Previously, we could judge this only from rock paintings discovered in France. Now, judging by the thick coat with the undercoat, we can conclude that the rhinoceroses were fully adapted to the cold climate from a young age.”

As it stands, researchers have been unable to further analyze this latest specimen until stable ice roads can form for them to travel back to Yakutia’s capital of Yakutsk.

Discovered downstream of Tirekhtyakh River, finding the rhino wasn’t a cakewalk, as transportation across Yakutia’s utterly vast and remote territory is incredibly treacherous. Even in the summer, many areas are only accessible by air or boat.

In the winter, however, a rather practical network of ice roads forms, which allows people to travel across the tundra.

Despite having to wait for those roads to form in order to properly assess the specimen, Dr. Plotnikov and his team have already gleaned much from the find.

The horns of this creature, for instance, have suggested that this particular species of woolly rhino foraged for food. The fact that the animal’s internal organs remain intact will also show the scientists a lot about how this prehistoric creature lived.

“There are soft tissues in the back of the carcass, possibly genitals and part of the intestine,” said Dr. Plotnikov. “This makes it possible to study the excreta, while will allow us to reconstruct the paleoenvironment of that period.”

Yakutia is a remarkably fertile place for those in search of Ice Age animals. In just the last few years, researchers have found ancient wolf pups, “pygmy” mammoths, birds, foals, and more. Just this past summer, an Ice Age wolf pup was discovered with the remains of what could have been one of the last woolly rhinos on Earth in its stomach.

As for this latest woolly rhino, it will ultimately be transported to Sweden where researchers have been working to sequence the genomes of several species of prehistoric rhinos.

Frozen Bird Found in Siberia is 46,000 years old

During the last Ice Age, a bird found in northeastern Siberia died and gives a crucial insight into the evolution and effects of climate change.

An international team of scientists has learned that at least 46,000 years ago, a bird discovered in the Siberian permafrost died.

The bird was found in northeastern Siberia, a mammoth steppe that extended across northern Canada, Europe and Asia during the last Ice Age when the bird was still alive.

DNA collected from this frozen bird could help shed light on how at the end of the last Ice Age, when the Earth was mostly covered in ice and snow, the mammoth steppe turned into tundra, taiga and steppe biomes and could further illuminate the evolution of subspecies.

In 2018, a well-preserved bird was discovered by local fossil ivory hunters 30 km east of the village of Belaya Gora, Yakutia, in northeastern Siberia (red dot, figure 2). The bird carcass was found approximately 150 meters (492 feet) into an ice tunnel that had been hydraulically mined into the permafrost at a depth of roughly 7 meters below the earth’s surface.

The frozen bird appeared to have died non-violently before being rapidly frozen, thus preserving its body for millennia. The ‘nearly intact’ body was so well preserved that it could be identified as a horned lark, Eremophila alpestris, appearing as if she had ‘died yesterday’. So it was somewhat surprising (and quite exciting) when radiocarbon dating revealed that the lark died sometime between 44,163–48,752 years BP — in the middle of the last Ice Age.

During the last ice age, mammoth steppe was the Earth’s most extensive ecosystem, covering much of the northern portion of the planet. It featured a cold, dry climate that favoured high-productivity grasses, herbs and willow shrubs, and was dominated by long-horned bison and horses — and was home to woolly mammoths, woolly rhinoceros and cave lions, all of which are now extinct. This ecosystem thrived for approximately 100,000 years before the thawing climate suddenly made it nearly extinct about 11,700 years ago.

This vast wide-open habitat is favored by horned larks, a species may have originated in northeastern Siberia during the middle Pleistocene (ref) before diverging into separate Eurasian and North American lineages. These small ground-nesting songbirds breed in the wide-open spaces of the high Arctic and above the tree line in mountains. Lacking any closely-related competitors, North American horned larks also breed in other, more temperate wide-open spaces, such as prairies, semi-arid regions and in deserts, which is where I first saw them.

To learn how this Pleistocene bird is related to modern horned larks, the researchers from the Centre for Palaeogenetics isolated ancient DNA from the specimen and analyzed it.

“The genetic analysis suggests that the bird belonged to a population that was a joint ancestor of two subspecies of horned lark living today, one in Siberia, and one in the steppe in Mongolia”, said lead author of the study, ornithologist Nicolas Dussex, a postdoctoral researcher at Stockholm University who specializes in conservation genomics and avian evolution.

“Our results support this theory since the diversification of the horned lark into these subspecies seems to have happened about at the same time as the mammoth steppe disappeared”, said co-author of the study, Love Dalén, a professor of evolutionary genetics at the Swedish Museum of Natural History and research leader at the Centre for Palaeogenetics.

As the planet warmed at the end of the last Ice Age, mammoth steppe nearly disappeared, giving way to several habitats that we are familiar with today: tundra in the north, boreal forest (taiga) in the middle and steppe in the south.

The researchers’ ultimate goal is to map the ancient lark’s genome and compare it to genomes of modern subspecies of horned larks to learn where this bird fits into the lark evolutionary tree and to better understand how subspecies arise.

Currently, there are at least 42 formally recognized subspecies of horned larks that cluster into one of six separate lineages. Additional studies may reveal that any or all of these lineages may qualify as distinct species clusters.

“This helps us understand how the diversity of subspecies evolves”, Dr Dussex said. In recognition of being the oldest bird yet unearthed from this time period, the researchers refer to her the ‘Icebird’.

Uncovering frozen mammals in Siberia is not new: people have uncovered a veritable zoo of frozen mammoths, woolly rhinoceroses, horses, bison and wolverines for many years, the researchers noted in their study (ref). But finding a frozen bird is something special because their bodies are small and fragile and thus, don’t typically preserve well.

Scientists at the Centre for Palaeogenetics are working with some of these other ancient animals, including an 18,000-year-old puppy named ‘Dogor’, which the research team are still working on to identify whether it’s a wolf or a dog. They also are working on a 50,000-year-old cave lion cub, ‘Spartak’, a 30,000-year-old severed wolf head, and a partially preserved woolly mammoth.

Analyzing the complete genomes of ‘Icebird’ and these other ancient specimens could provide a deeper understanding of the evolution of animals during the Pleistocene and of the impacts upon them from climate change.

“The new laboratory facilities and the intellectual environment at the Centre for Palaeogenetics will definitely be helpful in these analyses”, Professor Dalén pointed out.

The Centre for Palaeogenetics is a joint venture between Stockholm University and the Swedish Museum of Natural History. Its main objective is to bring together scientists from different disciplines, such as biology, archaeology and geology, into a cutting edge research environment dedicated to ancient DNA analyses.

Rare 3,000-Year-Old Weavings Discovered In Alaska

During excavations of an ancestral sod house on the shore of Karluk Lake, Kodiak Island, Alaska, archaeologists uncovered rare fragments of woven grass artifacts estimated to be 3,000 years old.

The fragments, which appear to be pieces of mats, are the oldest well-documented examples of Kodiak Alutiiq/Sugpiaq weaving.

“We were excavating a sod house beside Karluk Lake as part of a broader study to understand how Alutiiq people used Kodiak’sinterior,” said Saltonstall. “When we reached the floor, we discovered that the house had burned and collapsed.

The walls of the structure, which were lined with wood, fell into the building and covered a portion of the floor. This sealed the floor quickly and limited burning. As we removed the remains of the walls, we were surprised and excited to find fragments of charred weaving.

It looks like the house had grass mats on the floor. The pieces covered about a two-meter area at the back of the house, perhaps in an area for sleeping,” Alutiiq Museum Curator of Archaeology Patrick Saltonstall explained in a press release.

Weaving is a long-practiced Alutiiq art, but one that is difficult to document archaeologically as fiber artifacts are fragile and rarely preserved.

The Alutiiq Museum’s extensive archaeological collections contain grass and spruce root baskets that are as much as 600 years old but nothing older.

The house that produced the weavings was radiocarbon-dated to about 3,000 years old. The style of the structure and artifacts found in association support this determination.

“It is likely that our ancestors worked with plant fibers for millennia, from the time they arrived on Kodiak 7500 years ago,” said April Laktonen Counceller, the museum’s executive director.

“It makes sense. Plants are abundant and easily harvested, and they are excellent materials for making containers, mats, and other useful items. It’s just very hard to document this practice. This wonderful find extends our knowledge of Alutiiq weaving back an additional 2400 years.”

Close inspection of the woven fragments shows that their makerslaid down long parallel strands of grass (the warp) and then secured them with perpendicular rows of twining (the weft)spaced about an inch apart.

This technique created an open weave, also found in historic examples of Alutiiq grass matting. Small fragments of more complicated braiding may represent the finished edge of a mat.

The field crew carefully lifted the fragile woven fragments off the floor of the sod house and placed them in a specially made box for transport back to Kodiak and the Alutiiq Museum’slaboratory.

Here, they will be preserved, documented, and made available for study as a loan from Koniag—the regional Alaska Native Corporation for Kodiak Alutiiq people and the sponsor of the research. The corporation owns the land on which the excavation took and has been generously supporting archaeological studies in the region.

“Discoveries like these highlight our Alutiiq people’s innovation and resilience,” said Koniag President Shauna Hegna.“Koniag is humbled to partner with the Alutiiq Museum on critical projects like this.”

Denny, a mysterious child from 90,000 years ago, whose parents were two different human species

More than 90,000 years back in time, a unique child was walking the Earth. This individual was a young human hybrid. Scientists dubbed the ancient girl “Denny,” the only known individual whose parents were from two distinct human species!

In 2018, researchers looking into Denisova Cave in the Altai mountains of Siberia located the skeletal remains of the Denny. With only a bone and teeth to work with, researchers were still able to identify who the individual was.

A new effort, called FINDER, has been launched to explore the Denisovans and the relationships between them, Homo sapiens, and the Neanderthals.

The purpose of the investigation is to gain a further understanding of the interaction between the three species. It is known that the three species interbred, but the study aims to provide further detail of the connections between them.

The purpose of the project, led by Katerina Douka of the Max Planck Institute in Jena, Germany, and a visitor at Oxford University, is to identify where Neanderthals lived when they interacted with Homo sapiens, and why they eventually went extinct.

Studying the history of the Denisovans is difficult due to the fact that the only archaeological site that has yielded their fossils is the Denisovan Cave in Siberia. Moreover, only a few fossils have been unearthed from this site, along with some Neanderthal specimens.

Tom Higham, the deputy director of Oxford University’s Radiocarbon Accelerator Unit and an advisor to Finder, remarks on how great the site is. He states that it is nice and cool inside, thus preserving the DNA in the bones. Unfortunately, he goes on to add that the majority of the bones in the cave were destroyed by hyenas and other carnivores, leaving a mess of tiny, unrecognizable bone fragments scattered across the floor.

Higham states that it is not possible to distinguish between the source of a piece of material, be it from a mammoth, sheep, man, or woman, without a thorough examination. He further explains that even if only a handful of finds are from humans, they are of great value as they provide a great deal of knowledge.

DNA sequencing of the ancient girl’s bones revealed her to be a product of two distinct species. Her mother was Neanderthal, and her father was a Denisovan. Denny had been living with various Neanderthals and Denisovans in the cave when she tragically passed away at a young age.

It is believed that Neanderthals and Denisovans separated from each other at least 390,000 years ago, making them both now extinct groups of hominins.

Analysis of the genome of ‘Denisova 11’ – a bone fragment from the Denisova Cave located in Russia – reveals that the individual had a Neanderthal mother and a Denisovan father. The father’s genome displays Neanderthal ancestry, belonging to a population linked to a later Denisovan from the cave.

The mother came from a population that is more closely connected to Neanderthals that lived in Europe than to the earlier Neanderthal discovered in Denisova Cave, indicating that migrations between eastern and western Eurasia of Neanderthals happened sometime after 120,000 years ago.

The new study published in the journal Nature indicates that interbreeding between Neanderthals and Denisovans was more common than previously assumed, considering the small number of archaic samples that have been sequenced.

It could be assumed that the extraordinary lineage of Denny suggests that Neanderthals and Denisovans were often engaging in interbreeding, though researchers caution against forming such speculations hastily.

It is evident that the DNA of Neanderthals and Denisovans are different, making it easy to distinguish between them. According to Douka, this suggests that interbreeding between the two did not occur frequently, as otherwise, their DNA would be similar.

It has been demonstrated by prior research that Denisovans and Homo sapiens interbred, yet the question of why this happened at Denisova is still unanswered.

It has been proposed that the cave could be seen as a border crossing for the two species, with the Neanderthals mostly located in Europe and the Denisovans in the east. Periodically, both species would find themselves in the cave at the same time, which could have led to relations between the two.

Detailed studies of Denny’s Neanderthal mom revealed that her genes had a special connection to Neanderthals in Croatia, which suggests that the predecessors of her mother may have been part of a group migrating east from Europe to Denisova – where she and Denny’s father met at the boundaries of their respective homelands.

This is a captivating image, yet more data is needed to authenticate it. Researchers don’t have direct proof that the Denisovans were mainly situated in the east of the cave, notwithstanding, the fact that their genetic material has been identified in the DNA of people in Australia, New Guinea, and different parts of Oceania, reinforces this concept and implies that future investigations for sites should be focused on eastern Russia, China, and south-east Asia.

Though scientists have limited knowledge about the extinct human species known as the Denisovans, experts have recently been able to construct the inaugural facial reconstruction to provide an image of what they may have looked like. This has enabled people to see a vision of what the Denisovans may have appeared to be.

Higham mentions that researchers have numerous inquiries they have yet to answer. For instance, where did the Denisovans extend to, and what is the earliest proof for their divergence from the common ancestor they had with Neanderthals 500,000 years ago?

It may take some time before scientists can locate a bone or two from different areas, but the potential benefits would be worth the wait.