Nov 30th, 2019: Permafrost Pooch

[xoxoxoBruce]

Permafrost isn’t so perma anymore. The rate it’s melting we’ll have to find a new name like tempafrost or formerfrost.
This accelerating melt has revealed a bonanza for paleontologists, archaeologists, treasure hunters, and scavengers.

A mysterious prehistoric pup is causing scientists to scratch their heads after being recovered from the depths of Siberia’s permafrost.
The puppy, believed to be just two months old when it died, was named “Dogor” which means "Friend" in the Yakut language spoken in the area. It was discovered in the vicinity of the Indigirka River in Siberia, north-east of Yakutsk, and has recently been studied at the Swedish Centre for Palaeogenetics (CPG).

Like a natural refrigerator, the permafrost has kept the ancient canine in remarkably good condition – complete with fur, whiskers, and teeth – but the researchers are still unsure what species this curious specimen once belonged to. While the work has managed to discover the specimen is male and approximately 18,000 years old, preliminary genome sequencing was unable to tell whether it is a wolf, a dog, or perhaps a proto-dog common ancestor of the two. “The Centre has Europe’s largest DNA bank of all canines from around the globe, yet in this case they couldn’t identify it from the first try,” Love Dalén, professor of evolutionary genetics at the CPG, told The Siberian Times.

I noticed the threepoint upper incisors and remember seeing something similar in some prehistoric nightmare of a fish or lizard.
All I can find is the Teiidae lizards of the Americas.



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