Dec 21, 2020 11:27 PM
Canadian Gold Miner Finds 57,000-Year-Old Wolf Pup Still Covered in Fur
https://gizmodo.com/canadian-gold-miner-...1845925916
EXCERPT: Her life was short. Scientists estimate she lived for about six or seven weeks in the underground den, before it collapsed around her. This tragedy and the permafrost that preserved her body are the reasons we know of this wolf pup’s existence approximately 57,000 years later. Zhùr, or ‘wolf’ in the Hän language, is the subject of a paper published today in Current Biology.
[...] Zhùr’s mitochondrial DNA—a type of DNA that is prolific in each cell—offered them the chance to see how she was “related to a greater genetic diversity of the species.” They found that her mitochondrial genome was not a direct match to the clade of gray wolves that exist there today. It was, however, a match to a clade comprising wolves from North America and Eurasia, with a common ancestor they estimate to have lived between 86,700 and 67,500 years ago. In other words, if her mitochondrial genome doesn’t match the wolves in the area now, this suggests that at some point some wolf populations in the region were wiped out.
Artist’s conception of a wolf mother and pup hunting.
[...] Isotopic analysis provided more insight into the pup’s diet. What they discovered surprised them: Her meals indicated they had been pulled from local rivers. “Mostly when you think about wolves—Pleistocene wolves especially—you think about them being megafaunal specialists, [such as] eating mammoths, woolly rhinos, [or] bison,” Meachen said in a video chat. “Bison is the thing I would really expect her to have been eating. The fact that she was specializing on aquatic resources was a little surprising.” [...] “She was probably killed instantaneously from the den collapse,” Meachen said. If she had merely been trapped in the den, “her ultimate cause of death probably would have been starvation.”
The story of this wolf pup doesn’t begin or end with the science. Zhùr’s name means ‘wolf’ in the language spoken by members of Tr’ondëk Hwëch’in, a First Nation community who have lived in that area of the Yukon far longer than their non-native counterparts. To those in the Tr’ondëk Hwëch’in, Zhùr’s significance is more than just an outstanding discovery: She is considered family. Reverence for the land and everything on it is an integral facet of this First Nation, whose clans include the Wolf Clan... (MORE - details)
https://gizmodo.com/canadian-gold-miner-...1845925916
EXCERPT: Her life was short. Scientists estimate she lived for about six or seven weeks in the underground den, before it collapsed around her. This tragedy and the permafrost that preserved her body are the reasons we know of this wolf pup’s existence approximately 57,000 years later. Zhùr, or ‘wolf’ in the Hän language, is the subject of a paper published today in Current Biology.
[...] Zhùr’s mitochondrial DNA—a type of DNA that is prolific in each cell—offered them the chance to see how she was “related to a greater genetic diversity of the species.” They found that her mitochondrial genome was not a direct match to the clade of gray wolves that exist there today. It was, however, a match to a clade comprising wolves from North America and Eurasia, with a common ancestor they estimate to have lived between 86,700 and 67,500 years ago. In other words, if her mitochondrial genome doesn’t match the wolves in the area now, this suggests that at some point some wolf populations in the region were wiped out.
Artist’s conception of a wolf mother and pup hunting.
[...] Isotopic analysis provided more insight into the pup’s diet. What they discovered surprised them: Her meals indicated they had been pulled from local rivers. “Mostly when you think about wolves—Pleistocene wolves especially—you think about them being megafaunal specialists, [such as] eating mammoths, woolly rhinos, [or] bison,” Meachen said in a video chat. “Bison is the thing I would really expect her to have been eating. The fact that she was specializing on aquatic resources was a little surprising.” [...] “She was probably killed instantaneously from the den collapse,” Meachen said. If she had merely been trapped in the den, “her ultimate cause of death probably would have been starvation.”
The story of this wolf pup doesn’t begin or end with the science. Zhùr’s name means ‘wolf’ in the language spoken by members of Tr’ondëk Hwëch’in, a First Nation community who have lived in that area of the Yukon far longer than their non-native counterparts. To those in the Tr’ondëk Hwëch’in, Zhùr’s significance is more than just an outstanding discovery: She is considered family. Reverence for the land and everything on it is an integral facet of this First Nation, whose clans include the Wolf Clan... (MORE - details)