That’s one old kitty.
Researchers have discovered the remains of a 35,000-year-old saber-toothed tiger cub nearly perfectly preserved in Siberian permafrost, according to reports.
The remains — consisting of the animal’s upper torso, forward legs and head — were found encased in a chunk of ice by researchers in a remote corner of northeast Siberia, with most of its fur still astonishingly intact and appearing as if it had died mere weeks ago.
All of the cat’s whiskers and claws were in place, and its thick fur remained a vibrant reddish-brown with paler markings around its chin, much like any old house cat today.
“The mummy body is covered with short, thick, soft, dark brown fur with hair about 20–30 mm long,” researchers with the journal Scientific Reports wrote in a paper describing their findings.
“For the first time in the history of paleontology, the appearance of an extinct mammal that has no analogues in the modern fauna has been studied,” researchers added.
The kitten was believed to have been around three weeks old when it died, according to NPR.
Remains of saber-toothed tigers — officially called smilodons — have been found across Europe and Asia, Africa and the Americas, and are believed to have gone extinct at the end of the last ice age around 12,000 years ago.
Known for their trademark pair of large canine teeth, the predators were of the same greater mammal family as modern cats but were not closely related to any species alive today.
The new specimen — discovered in 2020, but revealed for the first time with the paper’s publication on Thursday — had distinct differences from modern big-cat cubs like lions, including a much larger neck, wider paws and no carpal pads on its wrists as is common in most cats today, according to researchers.
Remains from numerous other prehistoric animals have previously been found in the same region — the Indigirka River basin — including a number of mammoth bones.
Though mummies are even rarer than fossils and bones, several have been discovered in the basin over the last 10 years.
As recently as August, miners in Siberia located a woolly rhino’s remains with its horn still attached. And in June, a nearly perfectly preserved wolf dating back about 44,000 years was recovered from the ice.
