Mummy of saber-toothed cat frozen for 35,000 years

A group of researchers excavated the mummy of a newborn saber-toothed cat that died tens of thousands of years ago from frozen soil in Siberia. The young cat still has its whiskers and claws intact. New analysis of the animal’s head and upper body shows it was just three weeks old when it died in what is now the Sakha Republic in northeastern Russia, also known as Yakutia. Scientists found the pelvis, femur and lower leg bones were encased in the same block of ice as the mummy. The circumstances leading to its death have not been clearly determined.

The remains of intact saber-toothed cats are extremely rare. The mummy above belongs to the species Homotherium hiding extinct, according to research published on November 14 in the journal Scientific Reports. Saber-toothed cats lived throughout the world during the Upper Pleistocene (2.6 – 5.3 million years ago) and early Pleistocene (11,700 – 2.6 million years ago), but there is evidence that they were poorly distributed. more widespread at the end of the Pleistocene (last ice age).

“For a long time, the presence of H. latidens in Eurasia was recorded in the middle of the Pleistocene (126,000 – 770,000 years ago). The discovery of H. latidens mummies in Yakutia significantly expands understanding know about their distribution and confirm that they existed at the end of the Pleistocene in Asia,” said the research team from the Borissiak Institute of Paleontology.

The small frozen mummy shows that H. latidens was well adapted to ice age conditions. Researchers compared it to the carcass of a 3-week-old modern lion (Panthera leo) and found that saber-toothed cats had wider paws and did not have padding at the ankle joints to absorb shock like today’s big cats. . These adaptations allow saber-toothed cats to move easily in the snow, while their soft, thick fur protects them from polar temperatures.

Comparison with lions reveals that saber-toothed cats have large mouths, small ears, long forelimbs, dark fur and a much thicker neck. Scientists already knew this cat had a low body and long limbs from the skeletons of adult H. latidens, but new research shows that such a trait existed when the cats were 3 weeks old.

Results of carbon dating of the mummy’s fur showed that the cat was buried in permafrost for at least 35,000 – 37,000 years. The carcass was collected from the banks of the Badyarikha River in Yakutia in 2020, allowing researchers to describe for the first time the physical characteristics of H. latidens, including fur texture, snout shape and mass distribution muscle mass. In particular, the mummy still retains its sharp claws and mustache, but no longer has eyelashes.