A perfectly preserved head of a large wolf has been unearthed from the melting permafrost in eastern Siberia.
The head of a Pleistocene wolf. Image credit: Albert Protopopov.
The head of an adult wolf was found near the banks of the Tirekhtyakh River in the Yakutia region in 2018.
The specimen was dug out of the permafrost by local man Pavel Efimov hunting for mammoth tusks.
The frozen head is about 16 inches (0.4 m) long — much larger than that of a modern gray wolf. It has thick fur, a set of huge fangs and an almost intact brain.
The wolf’s remains were analyzed by Dr. Albert Protopopov, a researcher from the Republic of Sakha Academy of Sciences, and his colleagues.
The analysis revealed that the ancient wolf was between two and four years old.
The giant predator lived approximately 30,000 years ago (Pleistocene epoch).
A CT-scan of the wolf’s head. Image credit: Naoki Suzuki, Jikei University School of Medicine.
Dr. Naoki Suzuki from the Jikei University School of Medicine in Tokyo, Japan, and collaborators CT-scanned the specimen to build a digital model of the brain and the skull’s interior.
Source: sci.news
