Gold miners in Siberia have made a remarkable discovery: a mummified woolly rhino carcass with its horn and soft tissues still intact. The miners, working in the Sakha Republic, came across the remains while excavating a new quarry. Photos of the find, located in the Oymyakon District, appeared on the Russian social media site Telegram on August 2nd. Following the discovery, researchers at the North-Eastern Federal University (NEFU) in Yakutsk visited the site and recovered the rhino’s horn. The rest of the mummified woolly rhinoceros (Coelodonta antiquitatis) will be excavated in the coming months.
“This is a truly unique find that will allow us to study the history of the region, its ancient fauna, climate and geological conditions in more depth,” said Anatoly Nikolaev, rector of the NEFU, in a statement. The permafrost in Siberia provides ideal conditions for the preservation of ancient creatures. The cold temperatures mummify the remains, dehydrating soft tissues and locking them away in a frozen “time capsule.” The discovery of soft tissue is rare and offers scientists a much better understanding of the animal’s life and the environment at the time of its death, compared to skeletal remains. It also provides a valuable opportunity to extract ancient DNA from the remains.
Maxim Cheprasov, senior researcher and head of the laboratory of the NEFU Mammoth Museum, stated that this is only the fifth time scientists have found a woolly rhino with intact soft tissues. “Until today, there was no such rare find in the collection of the Mammoth Museum,” he said in the statement. “In the modern history of NEFU, this is the first such find.”
Woolly rhinos primarily inhabited northern Eurasia during the Pleistocene epoch (2.6 million to 11,700 years ago), appearing about 300,000 years ago. As the last ice age drew to a close, their range contracted, ultimately confining them to parts of Siberia. They eventually went extinct about 10,000 years ago, a consequence of the changing climate and human activity.
NEFU researchers plan to study the horn before the rest of the remains are excavated. “According to morphological parameters, it belonged to a mature individual,” said Cheprasov. “The exact biological age and sex of the animal will be determined after a comprehensive study of the carcass itself.”
The woolly rhino discovery is one of several projects at the NEFU focused on understanding the ice age megafauna of Siberia. In June, researchers performed a necropsy (animal autopsy) on a 44,000-year-old mummified wolf retrieved from the permafrost in the Republic of Sakha.
