Scientists conduct an post-mortem of a fossil brown bear with the geological age of three,460 years, discovered in the permafrost of northern Yakutia by reindeer herders in 2020, in Yakutsk, Russia February 21, 2023.
| Photo Credit: Reuters
A brown bear that lay virtually completely preserved in the frozen wilds of japanese Siberia for 3,500 years has undergone a necropsy by a crew of scientists after it was discovered by reindeer herders on a desolate island in the Arctic.
“This find is absolutely unique: the complete carcass of an ancient brown bear,” mentioned 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 km 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 tender tissue for 3,460 years, in addition to stays of its remaining repasts – fowl feathers and crops. The bear is described as being 1.55 metres (5.09 ft) tall and weighing practically 78 kg (12 stone).
“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,” mentioned Cheprasov.
The scientific crew in Siberia reduce by way of the bear’s powerful cover, permitting scientists to look at its mind, inside organs and perform a number of mobile, microbiological, virological and genetic research.
The pink tissue and yellow fats of the bear was clearly seen because the crew dissected the traditional beast.
They additionally sawed by way of its cranium, utilizing a vacuum cleaner to suck up the cranium bone mud, earlier than extracting its mind.
“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 mentioned.
He mentioned the bear was most likely aged about 2-3 years. 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 km (31 mile) strait. It might have crossed over ice, it may need swum over, or the island would possibly nonetheless have been a part of the mainland.
The Lyakhovsky islands comprise a number of the richest palaeontological treasures in the world, attracting each scientists and ivory merchants attempting to find woolly mammoths.
