Ice Age ‘Puppy’ Discovered After 18,000 Years Buried In Permafrost

The 18,000-year-old animal found in the ice of the Siberian permafrost, in a well-preserved shape, could be the world's oldest dog. The canine was discovered in the summer season of 2018 in a lump of frosted ground, according to Metro.

What surprised the scientists is that it wears a full set of teeth and a fur coat. The conserved animal has thick hair, velvety nose, whiskers, eyelashes, and sharp milk teeth. The furry dog also had an exposed rib cage.

Love Dalén and Dave Stanton found it. Initially, the duo thought it's a wolf - but after rounds of tests, they became skeptical that it could be a dog too.

"It's pretty [unusual] because you're [keeping the creature], and it [appears] like a very recently dead animal," Dalén told Metro. 

"But you think about it - this was an animal that [survived] with cave lions and mammoths and woolly rhinos. So it's pretty [impressive]," the professor of evolutionary genetics added.

Dalén pointed out that the animal was "amazingly well-preserved" before they cleaned it up. The duo initially did not recognize how old it was. The scientists said they saw it in the permafrost, but it appears that things get frozen in there that are only a few hundred years old or even a few decades. 

The reason why the scientists found it challenging to declare if the animal was a wolf or a dog was because of the divergence time. The duo said the creature could be a late Pleistocene wolf, a very early modern wolf, or a very early dog.

"If it turns out to be a dog [we] would say it is the earliest confirmed dog," the researchers said Fellow researcher Dave said the dog was in a tunnel covered into the permafrost, which the reason for its well-preserved state.

The canine was located in a remote area of north-east Siberia, a few hours away from Belaya Gora. The creature remained in Russia while Dalén and Stanton brought its rib bone back in Sweden for further investigation.

"It's very [extraordinary] to [obtain a well-preserved specimen]. It's [frozen] for the last 18,000 years," Stanton said. He added people couldn't usually find that kind of item unless they're in that kind of region.

Stanton found the results "exciting" since there is a chance they'll discover something new about the creature. "I feel somewhat nervous about messing something up in the [in the laboratory] as we [work] on something so ancient and well-preserved. You don't want to screw things up," he said.

The researchers said dogs seem to be domesticated from a lineage of wolves that went extinct; hence, it is challenging for the researchers to understand where and when dogs were tamed.

The duo said they had to examine the ancient samples of similar research as they find the answers since the population the said domesticated animals came from doesn't appear to be around anymore. However, they do not want to speculate on the results yet.

Sergey Fedorov, a 58-year-old museum worker who took the wonderful photographs of the pup, is also working on the specimen in Russia. Fedorov said he thoroughly removed the dirt from the critter's fur to expose an 'extremely rare' condition for samples that old.

The Russian museum worker was amused to witness the history of Earth. "[Imagine], this [pup was buried under the snow] in the same position and condition for 18,000 years without [any disturbance," Fedorov said.