Prehistoric living bacteria found in wolf frozen in permafrost

In Russia, they began to study the main predator of the Ice Age

In Russia, an autopsy was carried out on a prehistoric wolf, which had lain frozen like ice cream for more than 44 thousand years. This allowed us to better understand its lifestyle as the main predator of the Ice Age.

The wolf was discovered in 2021 under a layer of permafrost about 40 meters thick on the Tirekhtyakh River in the Abyi region in the Far East. His body was transferred to the Academy of Sciences of the Republic of Sakha and has since undergone an autopsy by scientists from the Mammoth Museum of the North-Eastern Federal University and the European University in St. Petersburg.

Under sterile conditions, the team cut up the carcass and took samples of internal organs and gastrointestinal contents. By studying the bacteria in the intestines, we could learn about the wolf's diet and health.

“His stomach has been preserved in an isolated form, there are no contaminants in it, so the task is not an easy one. As a result of the preparation, we hope to gain an understanding of the biota of the ancient Pleistocene. It was an active and large predator, we have the opportunity to find out what it ate. In addition, the objects that his victims ate also ended up in his stomach,” said Albert Protopopov, head of the department for the study of mammoth fauna of the Academy of Sciences of Yakutia.

Maxim Cheprasov, head of the laboratory of the Mammoth Museum of the North-Eastern Federal University added that they “selected one premolar tooth to determine the biological age of the find. Judging by the wear of the teeth and the development of the sagittal ridge, we can say that this is an adult male.»

Researchers hope that some of the microorganisms living in the animal's guts are still alive, having remained in a hibernation-like state for thousands upon thousands of years in sub-zero temperatures. If they survive, there is a chance that they could even be used to develop modern biomedicine.

“Our scientific collaboration with the NEFU Mammoth Museum has allowed us to learn more about the bacteria that lived in the mammoth steppe since the Pleistocene period. We see that living bacteria can survive for thousands of years in the finds of fossil animals, which are a kind of witnesses of those ancient times,” said Artemy Goncharov, professor of the Department of Epidemiology, Parasitology and Disinfection of the Northwestern State Medical University.

Scientists hope for good results that will allow progress in understanding what ancient microbial communities were like, what functions they performed and the extent to which dangerous pathogenic bacteria were represented in their structure.

“It is possible that microorganisms will be discovered that can be used in medicine and biotechnology as promising producers of biologically active substances,” Goncharov added.

This is not the only interesting specimen at the disposal of the North-Eastern Federal University: they recently also acquired another frozen wolf , found in the Nizhnekolymsk region of Yakutia, Siberia, and plan to begin studying it after completing studies of the current carcass.