US Edition
Famous Ice Age 'Puppies' Likely Wolf Cubs and Not Dogs, Study Shows
- Two exceptionally preserved canid cubs, known as the Tumat Puppies, were recovered near Tumat, Northern Siberia in 2011 and 2015 from frozen soil layers.
- At first, the two black-furred puppies discovered in Siberian permafrost were thought to be among the earliest domesticated dogs, but genetic testing revealed they were actually female wolf siblings from a now-extinct population dating back approximately 14,000 years.
- The cubs, estimated to be seven to nine weeks old, had diets including woolly rhinoceros meat and plants, and likely died trapped in a den after a landslide near a human butchery site.
- Anne Kathrine Runge expressed amazement that researchers are now able to reconstruct detailed aspects of the wolves’ lives, including what they last consumed, while Nathan Wales highlighted the wolves’ potentially larger size and their hunting behavior involving large prey.
- The study challenges prior domestication theories, revealing the puppies as wolves closely resembling modern ones, thus advancing understanding of Ice Age environments and wolf evolution.
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New genetic analyses reveal that specimens found in Siberia could rewrite what we know about the evolution of prehistoric animals and their link to humanity
·Buenos Aires, Argentina
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Scientists Just Solved a 14,000-Year-Old Puppy Mystery
In 2011 and 2015, two approximately 14,000-year-old pups were pulled from northern Siberia’s permafrost roughly 25 miles (40 kilometers) from the village of Tumat. Within the same layers of icy soil, researchers found woolly mammoth bones with evidence of human processing. This led some to wonder whether the “Tumat Puppies” may have been tamed wolves or even early dogs waiting around for scraps at a prehistoric butchering site. In a new study, a…
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