32,000-Year-Old Wolf Head Found in Siberian Permafrost

You wouldn’t know what you might encounter during a casual stroll in Siberia. Local resident Pavel Efimov was walking along the Tirekhtyakh River in the Russian Republic of Sakha when he came across something bizarre: a severed wolf’s head.

But when they were examined more closely by researchers, they found that it was not just the head of any kind of wolf, but that of a prehistoric predator which lived 32,000 years ago during the Ice Age.

“This is a rare finding of the first ever remains of a fully grown Pleistocene wolf with its tissue preserved,” paleontologist Albert Protopopov from the Republic of Sakha Academy of Sciences told The Siberian Times.

The head, which measures 16 inches in length and is larger than half the body length of a modern-day wolf, is astonishingly well-preserved with its fangs, thick fur, soft tissue, and brain intact.

Although this is not the first such discovery of an ancient wolf in Siberian territory, other discoveries have typically been skull specimens or the remains of pups. This head is believed to be from an adult wolf aged between two to four years old when it died.

The incredible discovery was announced in a joint exhibition organized by Yakutian and Japanese scientists in Tokyo, Japan.

Further analysis of the wolf’s DNA will be done by an international team of scientists at the Swedish Museum of Natural History. By examining the wolf’s ancient DNA, researchers hope to learn more about the evolution of ancient wolves to their modern iterations.

The researchers have time-stamped the impressive specimen to 32,000 years ago during the Pleistocene era. Read the free story.