According to foreign media BGR, scientists have found a wolf cub carcass in Canada, which is believed to be about 57,000 years old. The young wolf, frozen in a layer of permafrost, was first spotted by a miner while thawing the frozen mud in the Klondike goldfield. The animal was so well preserved that even the contents of its stomach were examined.
The wolf cub, the subject of a new research paper published in Contemporary Biology, is a well-preserved wolf cub carcass that provides researchers with an incredible window into life in North American dogs as glaciers recede.
The young wolf was reportedly found by a miner while clearing some frozen mud. The mud walls included a layer of permafrost, and the remains of buried wolf cubs were found when workers sprayed the mud with water. The cub is curled up, and there are still many intact parts and organs of the body such as its teeth.
The animal was named Zhùr and is considered the most complete example of a mummified dog from the period in which it lived. As for the cause of its death, the researchers believe it was buried in the cave "when the sediment collapsed" and was essentially buried alive. These remains have proven to be very valuable to scientists.
For example, the contents of Zhùr's stomach offered researchers an incredible opportunity to see what wolves ate during that period. In this case, the little wolf cub appears to have recently eaten aquatic life, including fish and perhaps local waterfowl. At less than two months old, the cub didn't do much hunting on its own, but its elders were likely to feed it.
"Zhùr was found near the Klondike River, which currently has a population of spawning Chinook salmon (Oncorhynchus tshawytscha) that connects to the Pacific Ocean via the Yukon River," the scientists revealed. "Previous studies have shown that some modern wolves from inland Alaska can get a large percentage of their diet from aquatic (and in some cases marine) sources such as salmon, at least seasonally."