They examined a frozen 40,000-year-old cat. A unique discovery
Scientists have found a saber-toothed cat frozen for almost 40,000 years. Now they have just announced the results of the analysis of the animal’s body. This discovery is extraordinary because the cat found was partially preserved intact since death.
More text below the video
An almost 40,000-year-old saber-toothed kitten pulled from the ice is a very unusual find. In 2020, the body of this three-week-old kitten was discovered in a cradle of Arctic permafrost in Russia’s Yakutia. Thanks to a kind of cryochamber, it allowed its head, front paws and torso to be preserved in almost perfectly preserved condition. Now researchers have published the results of their research.
Perfectly preserved
It is worth emphasizing at the outset that finding such remains from the Late Pleistocene is extremely rare. This is also the first case in the history of paleontology when it was possible to study the appearance of an extinct mammal even though there is no equivalent in the modern world – emphasizes the website sciencealert.com.
Usually the remains are scattered by feeding predators, but this time half of the body was preserved, along with part of the pelvic bone, femur and shin bones. Thanks to this, the researchers had access to such elements of the cat’s body as its fur, the shape of its muzzle and the toes in its front paw.
Thanks to this, you can find interesting differences from its living relatives. These include its paws, which are quite wide compared to young, large cats of its age. Compared to the three-week-old lion cub, the discovery from Yakutia also has a larger mouth and smaller ears. In addition, the neck is more massive and the front limbs are longer. The examined case also has a feature typical of its type, i.e. an enlarged premaxilla.
Despite several years of research, scientists have not discovered everything yet. We will learn the detailed anatomy of the saber-toothed kitten from Yakutia only after another series of measurements and analyses.
The photo at the top shows the outdoor cat’s cousin, Homotherium serum. The animal described in the text belonged to the species Homotherium latidens.
