Scientists uncover secrets of ice age bear found in permafrost | 24CA News
A brown bear that lay nearly completely preserved within the frozen wilds of japanese Siberia for 3,500 years has undergone a necropsy by a staff of scientists after it was found by reindeer herders on a desolate island within the Arctic.
“This find is absolutely unique: the complete carcass of an ancient brown bear,” stated Maxim Cheprasov, laboratory chief on the Lazarev Mammoth Museum Laboratory on the North-Eastern Federal University in Yakutsk, japanese Siberia.
The feminine bear was discovered by reindeer herders in 2020 jutting out of the permafrost on Bolshoy Lyakhovsky Island, a part of the New Siberian archipelago round 4,600 kilometres east of Moscow.
Because it was discovered simply east of the Bolshoy Etherican River, it has been named the Etherican brown bear.
The excessive temperatures helped protect the bear’s gentle tissue for 3,460 years, in addition to stays of its closing meal — chicken feathers and vegetation. The bear is described as being 1.55 metres (5.09 ft) tall and weighing almost 78 kilograms.
Brain, gentle tissues, inner organs preserved
“For the first time, a carcass with soft tissues has fallen into the hands of scientists, giving us the opportunity to study the internal organs and examine the brain,” stated Cheprasov.
The scientific staff in Siberia reduce via the bear’s powerful disguise, permitting scientists to look at its mind, inner organs and perform a bunch of mobile, microbiological, virological and genetic research.
The pink tissue and yellow fats of the bear was clearly seen because the staff dissected the traditional beast.
They additionally sawed via its cranium, utilizing a vacuum cleaner to suck up the cranium bone mud, earlier than extracting its mind.
Bear’s age, genetics, reason for loss of life decided
“Genetic analysis has shown that the bear does not differ in mitochondrial DNA from the modern bear from the north-east of Russia — Yakutia and Chukotka,” Cheprasov stated.
He stated the bear was most likely two to 3 years outdated when it died from an harm to its spinal column.
It is, although, unclear how the bear got here to be on the island, which is now divided from the mainland by a 50-kilometre strait. It could have crossed over ice, swum over, or the island would possibly nonetheless have been a part of the mainland.
The Lyakhovsky islands comprise among the richest palaeontological treasures on the earth, attracting each scientists and ivory merchants trying to find wooly mammoths.
