An autopsy is conducted on a carcass of a 44,000-year-old permafrost wolf by Russian researchers

A wolf that has been preserved in permafrost for around 44,000 years is being examined by local specialists in the far northern Yakutia area of Russia. They claim this discovery to be the first of its type.

The wolf’s body was discovered in Yakutia’s Abyyskiy area by accident in 2021, but scientists have only just had a chance to thoroughly analyze it.

“This is the first discovery of a late Pleistocene predator in history,” stated Albert Protopopov, the head of the Yakutia Academy of Sciences’ mammoth fauna department.

He stated, “Its age is approximately 44,000 years, and such finds have never been made before.”

Yakutia, a large expanse of wetlands and woods the size of Texas, is sandwiched between the Arctic Ocean and Russia’s far east Arctic region. Approximately 95% of the region is covered in permafrost.

Typically, it’s the herbivorous animals that perish, become stranded in marshes, freeze, and eventually make it to humans. Large carnivores have not been discovered before, according to Protopopov.

The wolf is distinctive, according to Protopopov, even though it is common to discover millennia-old animal remains buried deep in permafrost, which is gradually melting as a result of climate change.

It was one of the biggest predators and quite active. It was a very active, mobile predator that was also a scavenger, he continued. It was slightly smaller than cave lions and bears.

The development director of the paleogenetics lab at the European University of St Petersburg, Artyom Nedoluzhko, believes that the wolf’s remains provide an unusual window into Yakutia 44,000 years ago.

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“Knowing what this wolf ate, who it was, and how it connects to those ancient wolves that lived in the northeastern region of Eurasia is the main objective,” he stated.