Scientists in Russia have discovered an astonishingly-well preserved cave lion cub in Siberia’s permafrost, or a completely frozen ground, that lived 28,000 years ago, and may even still have traces of its mother’s milk in it.
Valery Plotnikov, one of the study’s authors, said that the find was unique as the cub’s internal organs, skeleton and even wool was so well-preserved that he even hopes that some disintegrated parts of the mother’s milk remains intact, so studies can be done to understand what the mother’s diet was.
The female cub named Sparta, was found at the Semyuelyakh River in Russia’s Yakutia region in 2018.
And a second male cub was found the year before, according to a study published in the Quaternary Journal.
Although the cubs were found only 15 metres apart, they belong to different litters, born thousands of years apart.
Boris, the male cub, lived around 43,448 years ago, the study said.
The two cubs aged 1-2 months were found by mammoth tusk collectors.
Two other lion cubs named Uyan and Dina have also been found in the region in recent years.
Similar finds in Russia’s vast Siberian region have happened with increasing regularity as climate change is warming the arctic at a faster pace than the rest of the world and has thawed the ground in some areas long locked in permafrost.
