A 14,000-year-old puppy discovered frozen in Siberian permafrost had a chunk of extinct woolly rhinoceros in its belly. The young canine, either a dog or a wolf, contained hairy tissue from its last meal.
DNA Analysis Reveals Prey
DNA testing by Stockholm's Natural History Museum identified the hide inside the puppy as woolly rhino, not a cave lion as initially thought. At 14,400 years old, the puppy likely ate one of the last remaining woolly rhinos, which went extinct around that time.
Dr Sergey Fedorov from Russia's North-Eastern Federal University noted the skin's rectangular shape. "My experience of taxidermy shows that skin could not tear like this in a natural way... It seems likely this piece of skin with such even edges was cut artificially by an ancient human," he said. "The puppy perhaps found the butchering waste of the carcass."
Discovery and Implications
The puppy was unearthed at Tumat in Siberia's Sakha Republic in 2011. A second frozen puppy found nearby will have its stomach examined. Professor Love Dalen from the Centre for Palaeogenetics explained: "We have a reference database... we checked the sequence data... it was an almost perfect match for woolly rhinoceros." He added, "It's completely unheard of. I'm not aware of any frozen Ice Age carnivore where they have found pieces of tissue inside."
Dalen speculated on the puppy's death: "This puppy must have died very shortly after eating the rhino, because it's not very digested. We don't know if it was a wolf, but if it was a wolf cub, maybe it came across a baby rhino that was dead... Maybe as they were eating it, the mother rhino had her revenge."
