A perfectly preserved head of a large wolf has been unearthed from the melting permafrost of eastern Siberia.
The head of a wolf from the Pleistocene. Image credit: Albert Protopopov.
The head of an adult wolf was found near the banks of the Tirekhtyakh River in the Yakutia region in 2018.
The specimen was dug out of the permafrost by local man Pavel Efimov looking for mammoth tusks.
The frozen head is approximately 16 inches (0.4 m) long, much larger than that of a modern gray wolf. It has thick fur, a set of enormous fangs, and a nearly intact brain.
The remains of the wolf were analyzed by Dr. Albert Protopopov, a researcher at the Sakha Republic Academy of Sciences, and his colleagues.
Analysis revealed that the former wolf was between two and four years old.
The giant predator lived approximately 30,000 years ago (Pleistocene epoch).
Dr. Naoki Suzuki of the Jikei University School of Medicine in Tokyo, Japan, and colleagues CT-scanned the sample to build a digital model of the brain and skull interior.
