An 18,000-year-old puppy found in Siberia was accurately identified as a wolf in a study published in late June.
The male puppy was around two months old when he died, according to the Siberian Times. His body was originally found in the summer of 2018 with much of his body, muzzle, teeth, whiskers, and eyelashes persevered in the Siberian permafrost, the outlet noted. (RELATED: Bad-A** Cat Gets Shot By Arrow, Believed To Have Taken Arrow Out By Himself)
The wolf was nicknamed “Dogor,” as it wasn’t known whether the baby was a dog or a wolf when he was first discovered, Live Science reported. An analysis published in Nature proved that Dogor was indeed a wolf, and was far from closely related to the earliest dogs on Earth.
An 18,000-year-old pup was recently discovered – amazingly preserved by permafrost in Siberia!
So far DNA tests have failed to determine if he’s a modern wolf, Pleistocene wolf, dog, or the transitional stage from a wolf to dog!https://t.co/w31O0IuUMp
— Wolf Conservation Center (@nywolforg) November 26, 2019
“We know that dogs were the first animal to be domesticated way back in the ice age,” study author Anders Bergstrom told Live Science, “We don’t know where in the world it happened. We don’t know what human group was involved, and we don’t know whether it happened once or multiple times.”
Melting permafrost has revealed a number of well-preserved animals, such as the mummy of a young horse that lived between 30,000 and 40,000 years ago, according to another article in Live Science. A man also discovered the body of an ancient kitten in the same Yakutia region in northern Russia, the outlet continued.