57,000-Year-Old Wolf Pup Found Mummified In Ice With Everything Intact But Eyes

A gold miner in Canada has discovered what is now being called the most perfectly preserved mummy of a wolf ever found.

Named Zhur by the local Tr'ond?k Hw?ch'in people, the newly discovered wolf pup is believed to have been locked in permafrost for 57,000 years.

57,000-Year Old Wolf Pup found mummified in permafrost (Image: Government of Yukon)

Published in the journal Current Biology, findings from the mummified wolf have unraveled several insights about the wolf¡¯s age, lifestyle, and relationship to modern wolves. "She's the most complete wolf mummy that's ever been found. She's basically 100% intact -- all that's missing are her eyes," says first author Julie Meachen, an associate professor of anatomy at Des Moines University, as per a Science Daily report.

"The fact that she's so complete allowed us to do so many lines of inquiry on her to basically reconstruct her life," Meachen added.

Looking at the preserves, the researchers have been able to pinpoint the conditions of the death of the wolf pup. They believe that to be mummified with such perfection, the animal would have to die ¡°in a permafrost location, where the ground is frozen all the time.¡± Also, this means that the animal got buried very quickly to have been mummified instantly, preventing any decomposition.

The researchers hence deduce that the wolf pup "was in her den and died instantaneously by den collapse," as per Meachen. "Our data showed that she didn't starve and was about 7 weeks old when she died, so we feel a bit better knowing the poor little girl didn't suffer for too long."

A close-up of the mummified wolf pup (Image: Government of Yukon)

Another interesting deduction from the mummified fossil was that the diet of the wolf pup was influenced by her proximity to water. "Normally when you think of wolves in the Ice Age, you think of them eating bison or musk oxen or other large animals on land. One thing that surprised us was that she was eating aquatic resources, particularly salmon," Meachen said.

The mummified wolf pup was discovered by a Canadian gold miner while water blasting at a wall of frozen mud in Yukon. Confirmed to be a descendant of ancient wolves from Russia, Siberia, and Alaska, Zhur will now be placed on display at the Yukon Beringia Interpretive Centre in Whitehorse.