A 14,000-year-old frozen puppy found preserved in ice in Siberia had a portion of an extinct woolly rhinoceros inside its stomach. The young canine, either a dog or a wolf, contained furry tissue from its final meal.
DNA analysis by Stockholm's Natural History Museum confirmed the hairy hide was from a woolly rhino, not a cave lion as originally thought. At 14,400 years old, the dog consumed one of the last creatures from a species that died out around that time.
Discovery and Analysis
Dr Sergey Fedorov from Russia's North-Eastern Federal University said: "I am very happy that DNA analysis has confirmed this as a woolly rhino. I noticed that the shape of the skin was rather strange. It was rectangular." He added: "My experience of taxidermy shows that skin could not tear like this in a natural way, if it was bitten off by an animal, for example. It seems likely this piece of skin with such even edges was cut artificially by an ancient human."
Fedorov suggested: "The puppy perhaps found the butchering waste of the carcass. When I saw this piece in its stomach was amazed. I thought it could be the trace of human activity." A small branch was also found in the puppy's stomach.
Excavation and Implications
The puppy was excavated at Tumat in the Sakha Republic of Siberia in 2011. A second frozen puppy has since been found nearby, and its stomach will be examined. Professor Love Dalen from the Centre for Palaeogenetics said: "We have a reference database and mitochondrial DNA from all mammals, so we checked the sequence data against that and the results that came back - it was an almost perfect match for woolly rhinoceros."
Dalen noted: "It's completely unheard of. I'm not aware of any frozen Ice Age carnivore where they have found pieces of tissue inside." He added: "This puppy, we know already, has been dated to roughly 14,000 years ago. We also know that the woolly rhinoceros (became) extinct 14,000 years ago. So, potentially, this puppy has eaten one of the last remaining woolly rhinos."
Cause of Death
Fedorov commented on Dalen's speculation about the animal's death: "This puppy must have died very shortly after eating the rhino, because it's not very digested." He added: "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, or the (adult) wolf ate the baby rhino. Maybe as they were eating it, the mother rhino had her revenge."
