The creature, called Zhùr by the locals Tr’ondëk Hwëch’in from the first nation, was discovered in the golden fields of Klondike, near the town of Dawson, by a gold miner, who threw a wall of frozen mud with water.
“This mummy is so complete that it has virtually all of its skin, most of its fur … all of its soft tissues present, and it’s around 56,000 years old,” Julie Meachen, an associate professor of anatomy at Des Moines University in Iowa, CNN said.
The female chick, according to Meachen, is “the oldest and most complete wolf ever found,” allowing researchers to delve deeper into what her life would have looked like.
Using X-ray techniques, experts determined that the puppy, which was kept in permafrost, died at 6 or 7 weeks.
Meanwhile, a technique called stable isotope analysis revealed that the animal lived at a time when glaciers had retreated.
“There weren’t that many glaciers around, which means there was a lot more fresh water,” she said. “There were a lot of streams, a lot of flowing rivers and probably a lot of other animals around. He lived in a lush time.”
The wolf’s diet, the researchers found, was influenced by its proximity to water: isotope analysis revealed “she and her mother ate mostly aquatic resources – things like salmon, maybe some shorebirds,” Meachen said.
A DNA analysis revealed that the chick is descended from ancient wolves – the ancestors of modern wolves – from Russia, Siberia and Alaska.
“It’s not a surprise – it’s about the things that were there at the time,” she explained. “But the most interesting thing about this, which most people may not know, is that wolves in the ice age were only related to the wolves that are around today.
“They are still the same species, but they are very different, because they are in the same species. Their genetics have changed quite a bit over time – the diversity of the wolf has diminished over time and, again, expanded.
“She really is an ancient wolf and she was related to all the wolves around her at the time,” Meachen said.
It takes very specific circumstances to create a permafrost mummy, the researchers said, although several well-preserved wolves have been recovered from Siberia. However, this chick, found in North America, was particularly rare.
“It’s rare to find these mummies in the Yukon. The animal must die in a permafrost location, where the ground is frozen all the time and must be buried very quickly, like any other fossilization process,” Meachen said in a statement. . “If it sits on the frozen tundra for too long, it will decompose or be eaten.”
Due to her “clean” condition, experts believe that the wolf cub died instantly, probably when her lair collapsed, as the data show that she did not starve.
The research was published Monday in the journal Current Biology.