A 35,000-Year-Old Saber-Toothed Cub Was Unearthed in Siberia—and It Still Had Its Whiskers and Claws

While searching for mammoth tusks in eastern Siberia, scavengers found a rare ice mummy along the banks of the Badyarikha River. One of the many treasures to be unearthed in Siberia, the finding turned out to be a three-week-old saber-toothed kitten preserved in the permafrost.

The study, published on Thursday in Scientific Reports, describes the frozen kitten’s 35,000-year-old body. The mummy contains the head and front parts of the animal, including fur and muzzle, making it possible for scientists to study these for the first time.

“This amazing find is one of the most exciting moments of my career,” says Manuel J. Salesa, a paleontologist at the National Museum of Natural Sciences in Madrid who was not involved in the study, to the New York Times’ Asher Elbein.

“Many paleontologists working with felids, including myself, have been hoping for decades to see a frozen saber-tooth felid from the permafrost,” he adds.

Using radiocarbon dating, the researchers found that the cub lived somewhere between 35,500 to 37,000 years ago. It also belonged to the species Homotherium latidens, and lived in the Late Pleistocene. Judging by its incisors, scientists estimate it was about three weeks old.

Alexey V. Lopatin, director of the Borissiak Paleontological Institute at the Russian Academy of Sciences and author of the study, tells NBC News’ Mirna Alsharif that it was a “fantastic feeling” to see such a long-extinct animal.

Siberia’s cold and dry conditions, with part of the region sitting above the Arctic Circle, make it easy to preserve ancient fossils. The permafrost layer, underneath an active soil, is frozen sediment that has remained so for two or more years. This is the layer where well-preserved fossils are often found, including a mummified woolly rhino and a 32,000-year-old wolf head.

Although other bones of Homotherium have been found, this rare cub marked the first time “the appearance of an extinct mammal that has no analogues in the modern fauna has been studied,” the study authors write.

Other frozen Homotheriums will surely be unearthed, Lopatin tells the New York Times. Salesa, the paleontologist in Madrid, tells the outlet he hopes the researchers find adults. “That would be absolutely shocking,” he adds.

Lopatin and his colleagues were able to study the cub’s neck and tufts of fur, even its paws. This is where the permafrost layer played an important role, as “the muscles, bones and skin are well preserved in the permafrost ice,” Lopatin tells Gizmodo’s Isaac Schultz.

The cub had no carpal pads, a physical trait common in cats and dogs, which may have been useful for walking on snow, says Lopatin, per the New York Times. The study also notes that the cub had a large stout neck, different than those of modern lion cubs.

The cub’s dark brown fur, however, was “perhaps the most surprising thing,” Lopatin tells the outlet. The well-preserved carcass offers a new glimpse into the extinct species. Previous descriptions were drawn from fossil bones, but the mummified cub provides insight into their soft tissue anatomy.

“DNA can be extracted, and this is one of the next stages of our research,” Lopatin tells Gizmodo.

The team is already working on another study where they’ll discuss the anatomical features of the cub in more detail, they write in the new paper. For now, at least, the remarkable frozen cub offers a snapshot of a time long gone, when woolly mammoths and saber-toothed cats roamed Earth.

Alexa Robles-Gil | | READ MORE

Alexa Robles-Gil is a bilingual science journalist based in New York City. Her work has appeared in the Guardian, Undark, Inside Climate News and more.