The Other Furry One

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Just like elephants, rhinoceroses also had an extinct relative that was furry. Gold miners in Siberia recently uncovered the well-preserved remains of a woolly rhinoceros, adding to the growing list of Ice Age creatures revealed by the region’s permafrost. Discovered in the Oymyakon District of Yakutia, the mummified remains included soft tissue and a horn, Popular Mechanics wrote.

Maksim Cheprasov, a senior researcher at Russia’s Mammoth Museum of North-Eastern Federal University (NEFU), hailed the discovery as offering scientists a rare opportunity to study these prehistoric giants up close.

“Until today, there was no such rare find in the collection of the Mammoth Museum,” he said. “In the modern history of the NEFU, this is the first such find – the carcass of a woolly rhinoceros with soft tissues.”

The woolly rhino roamed across the frozen landscapes of Eurasia together with the more famous mammoth until their extinction some 10,000 years ago following the last Ice Age. These massive plant-eaters stood more than six feet tall and stretched up to 16 feet in length. They had two horns, with the front one sometimes growing more than three feet long, according to Smithsonian Magazine.

Researchers are planning to extract ancient DNA from the well-preserved tissue in the hopes of uncovering genetic links between this rhino and other specimens found in the region.

Further study could shed light on how these Ice Age animals lived and evolved, as well as clues about how they became extinct. A recent study suggested that both climate change and human hunting contributed to the downfall of mammoths and woolly rhinos.

Yakutia, a region rich in permafrost, has become a treasure trove for Ice Age fossils, with numerous discoveries of mammoths, bison, and cave lions.

The freezing conditions preserve soft tissue through a process similar to freeze-drying, but these mummies are rare, as the animal must be buried quickly in frozen ground to avoid decomposition.