Wolf's dinner preserved in Siberia for 14,400 years sheds light on woolly rhino

"Researchers have shed light on the final centuries of the woolly rhinoceros after studying a hairy lump of meat from the stomach of an ancient wolf cub that became mummified in the Siberian permafrost. The beautifully preserved remains of a two-month-old female wolf cub were discovered in 2011 near the village of Tumat in northeastern Siberia. The animal is thought to have died 14,400 years ago when a landslide collapsed its den, trapping the cub and others inside."

"The discovery marked a rare opportunity, said Dr Camilo Chacon-Duque, who until recently was a researcher at the Centre for Palaeogenetics, a collaboration between Stockholm University and the Swedish Museum of Natural History. If they could obtain the rhino's genetic makeup from the partially digested meat, it might reveal the state of the species as it headed for extinction. The preserved wolf cub found in Tumat, Siberia."

A two-month-old female wolf cub was discovered mummified in permafrost near Tumat, Siberia, dated to about 14,400 years ago. The cub's stomach preserved a chunk of woolly rhinoceros tissue from a species that died out around 14,000 years ago. Scientists decoded the woolly rhino genome from that partially digested, matted meat. The genomic recovery represents the first instance of an ice age animal genome obtained from another animal's stomach and the youngest woolly rhinoceros genome available. The team expected to find signs of genomic erosion as the species approached extinction.

Read at www.theguardian.com