35,000-year-old saber-toothed kitten with preserved whiskers pulled from permafrost in Siberia

On November 17, 2024By Littum

Scientists have pulled the mummy of a newborn saber-toothed cat that died at least 35,000 years ago from the permafrost of Siberia – and the kitten still has its whiskers and claws attached.

A new analysis of the kitten’s stunningly preserved head and torso shows it was just 3 weeks old when it died in what is now Russia’s northeastern Sakha Republic, also known as Yakutia. Researchers found pelvic bones, a femur and tibia bones encased in a block of ice with the mummy. The circumstances surrounding the animal’s death are unknown.

It is extremely rare to find well-preserved remains of saber-toothed cats, and this one belongs to the species Homotherium latidensaccording to a study published Thursday (Nov. 14) in the journal Scientific reports. Saber-toothed cats of the extinct genus Homotherium lived across the globe during the Pliocene (5.3 million to 2.6 million years ago) and early Pleistocene (2.6 million to 11,700 years ago) eras, but evidence suggests that this group became less widespread toward the end of the Pleistocene (also known as the last ice age).

“For a long time, the recent presence of Homotherium in Eurasia was recorded in the Middle Pleistocene (770,000 to 126,000 years ago),” researchers wrote in the study. “The discovery of H. latidens mummy in Yakutia radically expands the understanding of the distribution of the genus and confirms its presence in the late Pleistocene (126,000 to 11,700 years ago) in Asia.”

Related: 32,000-year-old mummified woolly rhino half-eaten by predators excavated in Siberia

The small, deep-frozen mummy shows H. latidens was well adapted to Ice Age conditions, according to the study. The researchers compared the carcass to a modern 3-week-old lion (Panthera leo) young and found that the saber-toothed kitten had wider paws and no wrist pads—pads on the wrist that act as shock absorbers in today’s felines. These adaptations allowed saber-toothed cats to walk with ease in snow, while thick, soft fur observed on the mummy protected the predators from polar temperatures.

A figure from the study showing the mummy and a reconstruction of the skeleton of a young saber-toothed cat.

Researchers reconstructed the kitten’s skeleton using a 3D computer model. (Image credit: Lopatin et al. Scientific Reports, 2024)

The comparison with the lion showed that saber-toothed cats had a larger mouth, smaller ears, longer forelimbs, darker hair and a much thicker neck. Scientists already knew from studying the skeletons of adults Holotherium as these saber-toothed cats had short bodies and elongated limbs, but the new research shows that these features were already present at the age of 3 weeks.

Radiocarbon dating of the mummy’s fur suggests that the kitten has been buried in permafrost for at least 35,000 years and possibly 37,000 years. The carcass was pulled from the banks of Yakutia’s Badyarikha River in 2020, and its discovery has allowed researchers to describe, for the first time, physical characteristics of H. latidensincluding the texture of these cats’ fur, the shape of their muzzle, and the distribution of their muscle mass.

Remarkably, the mummy still had sharp claws and whiskers (or vibrissae) attached to it. “However, the mummy’s eyelashes were not preserved,” the researchers noted in the study.

The new analysis identified the species the mummy belongs to and its most striking features, but its authors are already working on a new paper. “The anatomical features of the find will be discussed in more detail in a subsequent paper,” they wrote.