'Stunning' lion cub found in Siberia is 28,000 years old, scientists say

August 18, 2021

Scientists have said that an astonishingly well-preserved cave lion cub found in Siberia’s permafrost lived 28,000 years ago and may even have traces of its mother’s milk in it.

Valery Plotnikov, one of the study’s authors, said in the regional capital Yakutsk that Sparta was so well preserved that it still had its fur, internal organs and skeleton.

“The find itself is unique; there was no any other such find in Yakutia,” he said.

"Maybe, we hope, some disintegrated parts of the mother's milk (remain intact). Because if we have that, we can understand what its mother's diet was."

The pair were first thought to be siblings. But as the first major study to be published on the pair concluded this week, they lived more than 15,000 years apart; carbon dating put Boris at 43,448 years old. A CT scan and genetic tests also determined the younger of the two was female: hence her new name, Sparta.

Source - https://www.reuters.com/lifestyle/science/cave-lion-cub-found-siberian-permafrost-is-28000-years-old-2021-08-13/, https://www.euronews.com/green/2021/08/06/stunning-ice-age-lion-cub-found-in-siberia-russia-is-28-000-years-old-scientists-say, https://news.sky.com/story/siberia-well-preserved-lion-cub-found-in-permafrost-lived-28-000-years-ago-12381028

August 18, 2021

awh… poor kitty

August 18, 2021

Holy sh.it 28,000 years ago and it looks like it could've been alive last week, that's insane

August 18, 2021

They look like modern lion we have now. Very interesting.

August 18, 2021

August 20, 2021

On 8/18/2021 at 12:28 PM, RAMROD said:

They look like modern lion we have now. Very interesting.

They were apparentely bigger and faster-developing than modern lions, due to the colder climate they lived in. They also seem to not have had dark spots on their fur like African lion cubs do, also as a way of adapting to the ''whiter'' lanscape of Siberia.

(It's also said that given the fact that the cave lion lived in varied habitats across Eurasia, there were likely differences in how they looked in every region.)

https://www.mdpi.com/2571-550X/4/3/24/htm