The puppy, believed to be just 2 months old when it passed away, was called “Dogor” which means “Friend” in the Yakut language spoken in the location. It was discovered in the vicinity of the Indigirka River in Siberia, north-east of Yakutsk, and has actually lately been examined at the Swedish Centre for Paleogenetic (CPG).

Like a natural refrigerator, the ice has actually kept the ancient dog in remarkably good condition– complete with fur, whiskers, and teeth– however the scientists are still unsure what species this interested specimen once belonged to.

While the work has actually managed to find the specimen is male and approximately 18,000 years old, preliminary genome sequencing was not able to inform whether it is a wolf, a canine, or possibly a proto-dog common ancestor of the two.

” The Centre has Europe’s largest DNA financial institution of all canines from around the globe, yet in this situation they could not identify it from the first try,” Love Dalén, teacher of evolutionary genetics at the CPG, told The Siberian Times

“This is intriguing, what if it’s a dog? We can’t wait to get results from further tests,” included Sergey Fedorov from the Institute of Applied Ecology of the North at the North-Eastern Federal University in Yakutsk.

People began to work out in this northern part of Russia around 32,500 years ago. Furthermore, previous study has actually suggested that humans domesticated dogs from wolves some 10,000 to 40,000 years ago. This suggests that Dogor could, theoretically, fit anywhere within this range as a faithful home canine, a ravenous wild wolf, or anything in between.

Ice creates the best conditions to preserve organic matter. The ice-cold temperature levels are simply low enough to stave off most microbial and fungal growth that would certainly otherwise decompose the body, but not cold enough to damage the tissues. Occasionally, if conditions are perfect, scientists are also able to get pieces of viable DNA that can be used to series the genome of the microorganism in question.

Another stunning example of conservation by ice is the 40,000-year-old head of an ice age wolf, still covered in skin and hair, that was discovered last year in the Abyisky area of northern Yakutia.

Researchers have actually recovered dozens of wooly mammoth bodies from the permafrost of Siberia and past in the past couple of decades. One of the most famous and studied samplings is a 28,000-year-old mammoth named “Yuka” that was located near the mouth of the Kondratievo River in Siberia over the summer of 2010. Although there is still a long way to go, scientists have also been toying with the idea of harnessing the DNA from permafrost-preserved mammoths and using it to reanimate the species from extinction.