Researchers were stunned to find that a pup that died in the last Ice Age ate a woolly rhinoceros (Coelodonta antiquitatis), which went extinct around 14,000 years ago, just at the same time when the pup had its last meal.
The well-preserved animal sample was found inside the Ice Age pup that they initially thought was a piece of meat. They thought the puppy had chewed off a cave lion for its last meal. However, the necropsy results revealed that the remains were from a woolly rhino. The rare discovery will help scientists understand the predator-prey dynamics of ancient animals.
Well-Preserved Ice Age Puppy Had One Undigested Chunk of A Woolly Rhino in Its Stomach
How Did the Puppy Take Down a Woolly Rhino?
The study, titled "Pre-extinction Demographic Stability and Genomic Signatures of Adaptation in the Woolly Rhinoceros," published in Current Biology, was part of a larger study about how climate change affected the Ice Age fauna. The researchers of the recent study identified the mummified Ice Age puppy as Tumat after the location in Siberia where they found it.
Study first author Edana Lord, a postgraduate student at the Center for Paleogenetics, told Inverse that they were shocked to discover an animal inside the pup's stomach since they have only found remains of plants in preserved ancient creatures before. Lord says it is very unusual to find a chunk of a preserved animal in another creature's stomach.
As to how Tumat was able to take down a woolly rhino, the team speculates that the pup may have been a part of a large scavenging pack that hunted other animals, such as woolly rhinos. They noted that the samples were conserved well that the team could genetically analyze the two species.
The samples were well-preserved because they were encased in permafrost, a subsurface layer of soil in the polar regions that experience very low temperatures and stay frozen all year round. However, the analysis showed that Tumat might have met an untimely demise after eating one of the last woolly rhinos. It likely fell into a snowy crevice and was buried by snow.
The ultra-low temperature mummified Tumat and allows scientists to learn about its past life and what happened thousands of years ago. Lord told Inverse that the intact fur and skin samples were useful for genetic analysis because they provide more DNA for sampling.
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Predators Did Not Cause Extinction of Woolly Rhinos
Despite eating one of the last woolly rhinos during the last Ice Age, scientists said that predators probably did not cause the extinction of woolly rhinos. Instead, Live Science reported that the rapidly warming climate at the end of the last Ice Age must have caused it.
Scientists conducted genetic sequencing on a woolly rhino nuclear genome, and 14 mitochondrial genomes, including the one found inside the Ice Age pup's stomach. They learned that the population of woolly rhinos was stable until a few thousand years before they went extinct.
The genetic diversity from the samples implies that there was no inbreeding, which plagued the dwarf woolly mammoths around 4,000 years ago on Wrangel Island of the northern part of Russia.
The extinction is also not due to the arrival of humans in Siberia because the decline in the numbers of the woolly rhinos did not coincide with the time the humans reached the region, Sci-News reported.
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