In Siberia’s frozen ground, a predator from the Ice Age has been waiting to be found. Local residents came across the wolf’s body in 2021, sealed in the ice along a riverbank.
Unlike most discoveries that are just bones or fragments, this wolf was almost whole. Its skin, fur, and even internal organs had survived tens of thousands of years of cold storage.
Early analysis suggests it was an adult male that lived about 44,000 years ago, during the late Pleistocene.
In June 2024, researchers in Yakutsk completed a necropsy – an animal autopsy – on the specimen. The results could change what we know about Ice Age predators and the worlds they once roamed.
First intact Ice Age wolf
After the preliminary exam, the group highlighted Albert Protopopov of the Academy of Sciences of Yakutia (SB RAS) as a key figure in the work.
He oversees large-mammal Ice Age finds in the region and coordinated the study at the North-Eastern Federal University Mammoth Museum.
“This is the world’s first discovery of a late Pleistocene predator,” said Protopopov. “Usually, it’s the herbivorous animals that die, get stuck in swamps, freeze and reach us as a whole. This is the first time that a large carnivore has been found.”
Researchers sampled the stomach, intestines, soft tissues, and multiple organs of the wolf in sterile conditions.
The aim is straightforward: read the tissues, reconstruct the diet, and inspect any surviving microbiota – the community of microbes that lived in and on the animal.
Frozen ground stops time
Cold acts like a pause button on decay, but it is not the only factor at play. Natural dehydration removes water from soft tissues. That slows bacterial breakdown and helps preserve DNA.
Experimental work on salt mummification – a dehydration pathway that stabilizes tissue – has documented this process.
Permafrost can also limit oxygen and liquid water, two ingredients microbes need for rapid growth. In the right mix of cold and dryness, flesh can persist for tens of thousands of years without turning to bone.
Ice Age wolf’s body
A well executed necropsy can pull together life history in fine detail. By comparing isotopes from muscle and bone with prey signatures, investigators can sketch the wolf’s hunting range and preferred meals.
Artyom Nedoluzhko is the development director of the paleogenetics laboratory at the European University of St. Petersburg.
“The main goal is to understand what this wolf fed on, who it was, and how it relates to those ancient wolves that inhabited the northeastern part of Eurasia,” he said.
Parasites, microtears, and healed fractures can also hint at territory fights, seasonal stress, and survival after injury.
Ancient microbes under review
The team will screen the gut and organs for ancient pathogens – disease-causing microbes that sometimes persist in frozen ground.
Lab groups recently revived multiple giant viruses from Siberian permafrost that infect amoebae. This confirmed that viable particles can endure for millennia – a result that keeps the biosecurity discussion grounded in real data.
Warming raises another concern: the chance that thaw events resurface spores from old carcasses. Modeling work has linked deeper seasonal thaw to higher anthrax risk for Arctic herds.
The analysis also found that unusually warm years can prime outbreaks in following seasons. Public health agencies are already monitoring this risk pattern.
Wolf on the family tree
Genetic material from the carcass can be compared with ancient and modern wolves to place this individual on the family tree.
A large multi-team study analyzed 72 ancient wolf genomes. The results showed that dogs trace ancestry to eastern Eurasian wolves, with additional input from southwestern Eurasian populations. The project also mapped gene flow across 100,000 years.
With a well preserved genome, the complete DNA set from this wolf, researchers can test whether this predator aligns with known Siberian lineages or represents a branch we have not sampled yet.
It can also refine dates for when certain traits, like skull shape or digestion-related genes, spread through northern packs.
Carnivores are seldom preserved
Most frozen carnivores reach us in pieces, a head here or a limb there, which limits what we can learn about diet and disease.
Herbivores are overrepresented in the record, so a complete adult wolf adds missing data to Ice Age food webs.
Pups have turned up before in the north, including an exquisitely preserved 57,000-year-old Yukon wolf, Zhùr.
That wolf case yielded hard numbers on diet and growth and serves as a baseline paper for what a complete Ice Age canid can reveal and pairs with the goals in Yakutia.
Dissection under the microscope
The first pass focuses on non-destructive imaging and small biopsy cores. Teams usually start with CT scans, collect hair and skin for microscopy, and then move to microsamples from organs and the gut.
From there, technicians extract DNA and RNA in clean rooms to minimize contamination.
They also culture microbes under strict containment to screen for viable organisms and sequence metagenomes to catalog dead fragments that still carry useful signals.
Next steps for the Ice Age wolf
Once the genomes from the wolf and its gut contents are sequenced, the data will be compared with regional prey archives.
That could identify seasonal hunting habits and specific carcass use, such as whether the wolf scavenged mammoth or bison during lean months on the ice.
The microbial work will be cross-checked against controls from modern soils and museum blanks to separate Ice Age signals from modern noise.
Former laboratory evidence of revived permafrost viruses reinforces why these protocols exist and why surveillance should expand in thawing Arctic zones.
Image Credit : Michil YAKOVLEV. Click here for more detailed photos of the Ice Age wolf…
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