- A local resident of Yakutia, Siberia, found the old carcass of a juvenile rhino in melting permafrost.
- Researchers have said that the carcass is between 20,000 and 50,000 years old and the most complete young woolly rhino ever found.
- Most of the rhino’s fur, hooves and internal organs are intact – researchers have even found the animal’s horn nearby.
- One expert believes the rhino drowned when he was three or four years old.
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Alexei Savvin came across an unprecedented find that was walking near the Tirekhtyakh River in Yakutia, Siberia, last August: an almost perfectly preserved woolly rhino carcass.
Most of the rhinos’ hooves, teeth and internal organs were still intact. The animal still had some of its thick fur coat, and researchers even found its horn that broke off but lay nearby.
After analyzing the carcass, Siberian scientists announced on Tuesday that the rhino would probably live between 20,000 and 50,000 years ago.
It is one of the most intact ancient rhinos ever found.
“The young rhino was between three and four years old and lived separately from his mother when he died, probably by drowning,” Valery Plotnikov, a paleontologist at the Russian Academy of Sciences, told the Siberian Times.
“The rhino has a very thick short undergrowth, probably it died in the summer,” Plotnikov added.
A local resident of Yakutia, Siberia, found a frozen woolly rhino in August. The carcass still had intact fur.
Department of Mammoth Fauna Studies of the Sakha (Yakutia) Academy of Sciences / Handbook via Reuters
The rhino used its horn to search for food
Siberian scientists hope to take the carcass to a radiocarbon laboratory next month to get a better idea of how many thousands of years ago the animal died. There they also intend to discover what sex the rhino was.
For the time being, they are waiting for roads to open between where Savvin found the rhino and the nearby city of Yakutsk.
A scientist holds up a tooth of a frozen woolly rhino discovered in Yakutia, Siberia, in August 2020.
Department of Mammoth Fauna Studies of the Sakha (Yakutia) Academy of Sciences / Handbook via Reuters
According to Plotnikov, it was a stroke of luck to find the rhino’s small horn.
“It’s a rarity because it decomposes fairly quickly,” Plotnikov told local store Yakutia 24 TV. The researchers found traces of wear and tear on the horn, suggesting the rhino used it to collect food, Reuters reports.
Researchers have found the woolly rhino’s tusk near its frozen carcass in Siberia.
Department of Mammoth Fauna Studies of the Sakha (Yakutia) Academy of Sciences / Handbook via Reuters
Wool rhinos lived throughout Europe and North Asia until they became extinct about 14,000 years ago at the end of the last ice age. The creature had two horns – one small horn between its eyes and another protruding upwards – and was covered with a thick fur coat.
These herbivores feasted on grass; adults could reach a length of 13 feet and weigh up to 2.2 tons (4400 pounds).
Not the first find of its kind
A woolly rhino replica on display at the Weston Park Museum in Sheffield, UK.
Wikimedia Commons
Discoveries like these are likely to become more common as global temperatures continue to rise.
As the planet warms, the permafrost – soil in the Northern Hemisphere that remains frozen throughout the year – begins to thaw. As it melts, ice age creatures like this woolly rhino that has been buried for tens of thousands of years begin to be excavated.
In 2014, scientists found a baby-woolly rhino carcass – nicknamed Sasha – in the same region of Siberia as this new rhino was found.
Sasha lived 34,000 years ago, according to the Siberian Times, and was covered in a strawberry-blonde fur coat.
The rhino baby died at the age of seven months and had two horns.
Yakutia found another find in 2019: scientists have discovered a 40,000-year-old decapitated wolf’s head, complete with fur, teeth, brain and facial tissue on the banks of a river.
A severed wolf’s head dating from the ice age has been found in Russia
Reuters
In a similar finding last September, Siberian researchers announced that they had found an adult cave bear – with its nose, teeth and internal organs still intact. Scientists believe the bear died 22,000 to 39,500 years ago. Its species, Ursus spelaeus, lived during the last ice age and died 15,000 years ago.
The Lyakhovsky Islands, where the bear was found, are also full of remnants of woolly mammoths from the last ice age.
A carcass of an ice age cave bear found on the Great Lyakhovsky Island between the Laptev Sea and the East Siberian Sea in northern Russia.
Northeastern Federal University via AP
The Siberian permafrost has also revealed two perfectly preserved extinct cave lion cubs, as well as an old baby horse that died in a mud pit 42,000 years ago. The foal’s hair, skin, tail and hooves were whole.