Lion carcass intact after 30,000 years buried under ice

The remains of two small cave lions have been found preserved in near-perfect condition for more than 30,000 years in the frigid north of Russia.

The body of a cave lion cub still has its fur intact. Photo: Mirror.

Two lion cubs named Uyan and Dina, just about a week old, died when a cave in Siberia, northern Russia, collapsed 30,000 years ago, an international team of paleontologists and biologists concluded in a report released on October 26 at a meeting of the Society of Vertebrate Paleontology, according to Seeker.

“They were crushed to death,” said Olga Potapova, collections manager at the Mammoth Site Museum in Hot Springs, South Dakota, and co-author of the study.

According to Potapova, the last cave lion lived in Alaska about 14,000 years ago. Little is known about the development of cave lions from cub to adult, so the discovery of the pair of cubs is significant, revealing how ancient lions grew compared to modern species.

Uyan's body was more intact than Dina's, weighing about 2.8 kg, slightly more than a newborn modern lion's 2.1 kg. Because the cubs have no easily identifiable sex characteristics, the team was unable to determine whether Uyan and Dina were male or female.

Uyan's body is about the size of an adult house cat, measuring 43 cm in length. Its 7 cm long tail accounts for 23% of its body length, much shorter thanThe tail accounts for 60% of the body length.modern lions, Potapova said. Uyan’s legs were not yet developed enough for walking, but it could certainly crawl. Uyan was also heavily haired, with its fur measuring 3 centimeters long.

Dina and Uyan were too young to see clearly. "Dina's eyelids were still closed, while Uyan's left eye was tightly shut and his right eyelid was slightly open," Potapova reported. Researchers are not sure if Uyan's right eyelid opened before or after the animal died.

Modern lions do not open their eyes for two to three weeks after birth, and they cannot see clearly for another week. Given Uyan’s age, it is likely that the animal’s eyes were still closed when it died.

Modern lions’ baby teeth erupt when they are three weeks old, replaced by permanent teeth at three months. However, CT scans of Uyan and Dian’s bodies show that baby and permanent teeth are already emerging beneath the gums in both animals. “Uyan’s early tooth eruption suggests that the baby teeth would have likely fallen out earlier, around two months of age,” the team speculated.

Since the cubs had no teeth yet, they continued to feed on their mother’s milk. Uyan’s stomach was empty, but a CT scan showed that he had been nursing in the hours before his death.

Although the bodies of the two lions were perfectly preserved, their DNA was in such poor condition that cloning was impossible, said Beth Shapiro, associate professor of ecology and evolutionary biology at the University of California, Santa Cruz, USA.

According to VNE