Siberian Princess reveals her 2,500-year-old tattoos

Tattoos aren’t just a trendy way for people to express themselves – they’re also apparently a time-honored tradition dating back almost three thousand years.

A Siberian mummy, who researchers believe was buried 2500 years ago, will show off her intricate ink when she finally goes on display this month, and her shockingly well-preserved body art makes her look surprisingly modern.

The mummified body of the young woman, believed to be between 25 and 28 years old, was found in 1993, researchers told The Siberian Times.

Since then she has been kept frozen in a scientific institute, but she will soon be available to the public to be viewed from a glass case at the Republican National Museum in Siberia’s capital of Gorno-Altaisk.

The woman, dubbed in the media as the Ukok “princes,” was found wearing expensive clothing – a long silk shirt and beautifully decorated boots – as well as a horse hair wig.

Archeologists told the paper that because she was not buried with any weapons she was not a warrior, and that she was likely a healer or storyteller.

Though her face and neck weren’t preserved, she was inked across both arms and on her fingers, in what researchers say was an indication of status.

“The more tattoos were on the body, the longer it meant the person lived, and the higher was his position,” lead researcher Natalia Polosmak told the Times.

The woman was buried beside two men whose bodies also bore tattoos, as well as six horses.

Researchers think the group belonged to the nomadic Pazyryk people, and that their body art is something special even in comparison to other mummies who have been found wih tattoos in the past.

“Those on the mummies of the Pazyryk people are the most complicated and the most beautiful,” Polosmak told the Times.

“It is a phenomenal level of tattoo art,” she said. “Incredible.”

Not everyone was pleased that the mummy was uncovered.

Controversy erupted after she was discovered, as many believed she should not have been removed from her burial site. Some locals even believed her grave’s disruption caused a “curse of the mummy” which they blamed for the crash of the helicopter carrying her remains.

“The Altai people never disturb the repose of the interned,” Rimma Erkinova, deputy director of the Gorno-Altaisk Republican National Museum told the Times. “We shouldn’t have any more excavations until we’ve worked out a proper moral and ethical approach.”

Local authorities in the region have declared the area a ‘zone of peace,’ so no more excavations can be done in an effort to prevent plundering, though scientists believe there are many more mummies that can be found.

Meet Sparta, the 28,000 Year Old Perfectly Preserved Lion Cub

Scientists say the remains of a lion cub, named Sparta and found in Siberia in 2018, are 28,000 years old and in excellent condition.

They say the lion cu, may still hold some of its mother’s milk inside it.

The cub was a female cave lion that researchers named Sparta. Her remains were discovered in the permanently frozen ground at the Semyuelyakh River in Russia’s Yakutia area.

The findings were part of a study published in the journal Quaternary.

According to the study, the cubs were found fifteen meters away from each other. However, scientists claim many generations separated them. The research showed that Boris lived around 43,448 years ago.

Cave lions died out thousands of years ago. The two cubs, aged one to two months old, were found by mammoth tusk collectors. Mammoths were large, hairy prehistoric elephants with very long tusks.

“To my knowledge, this is the best-preserved frozen specimen from the last Ice Age ever found,” study author Love Dalén, an evolutionary geneticist at Stockholm University’s Centre for Palaeogenetics, tells NBC News. “Sparta is in near-perfect condition.”

Cave lions coexisted with early humans for thousands of years, according to the study. For example, the Chauvet Cave in France depicts cave lions drawn on walls. The early cave paintings are estimated to be more than 30,000 years old.

The coloration of cub fur appears different than that of mature cave lions, requiring further study to determine if aging causes changes. Researchers also noted similarities in the fur between the big cats and lions of the Ice Age that still roam the savannas of Africa.

The species is thought to have smaller manes than African lions while adapting to colder climates.

Other lion cubs found in Siberia

Two other lion cubs have also been found in Siberia’s Yakutia area in recent years.

Valery Plotnikov is one of the study’s writers. He told Reuters that Sparta was so well-preserved that her fur, organs, and skeleton were still intact.

“The find itself is unique; there was not any other such find in Yakutia,” he said.

Plotnikov added that the scientists hope to find evidence of mother’s milk inside Sparta in order to learn about the diet of cave lions.

There have been numerous other similar discoveries in Russia’s larger Siberian area in recent years.

Climate change is warming the Arctic faster than the rest of the world. That increase in temperature has melted the ground in some areas that were permanently frozen.

A 42,000-Year-Old Foal Entombed in Ice Still Had Liquid Blood in Its Veins

Last August, a group of mammoth tusk hunters unearthed the nearly intact remains of a 42,000-year-old foal during an expedition to Siberia’s Batagaika crater.

Preserved by the region’s permafrost, or permanently frozen ground, the young horse showed no signs of external damage, instead retaining its skin, tail, and hooves, as well as the hair on its legs, head, and other body parts.

Now, the Siberian Times reports, researchers from Russia’s North-Eastern Federal University and the South Korean Sooam Biotech Research Foundation have extracted liquid blood and urine from the specimen, paving the way for further analysis aimed at cloning the long-dead horse and resurrecting the extinct Lenskaya lineage to which it belongs.

To clone the animal, scientists would need to extract viable cells from the blood samples and grow them in the lab. This task is easier said than done: Over the past month, the team has made more than 20 attempts to grow cells out of the foal’s tissue, but all have failed, according to a separate Siberian Times article. Still, lead Russian researcher Lena Grigoryeva says, those involved remain “positive about the outcome.”

The fact that the horse still has hair makes it one of the most well-preserved Ice Age animals ever found, Grigoryev tells CNN’s Gianluca Mezzofiore, adding, “Now we can say what color was the wool of the extinct horses of the Pleistocene era.”

In life, the foal boasted a bay-colored body and a black tail and mane. Aged just one to two weeks old at the time of his death, the young Lenskaya, or Lena horse, met the same untimely demise as many similarly intact animals trapped in permafrost for millennia.

The scientists extracted liquid blood samples from the 42,000-year-old animal’s heart vessels Semyon Grigoryev/North-Eastern Federal University

The foal likely drowned in a “natural trap” of sorts—namely, mud that later froze into permafrost, Semyon Grigoryev of Yakutia’s Mammoth Museum told Russian news agency TASS, as reported by the Siberian Times.

“A lot of mud and silt which the foal gulped during the last seconds of [the foal’s] life were found inside its gastrointestinal tract,” Grigoryev says.

This is only the second time researchers have extracted liquid blood from the remains of prehistoric creatures.

In 2013, a group of Russian scientists accomplished the same feat using the body of a 15,000-year-old female woolly mammoth discovered by Grigoryev and his colleagues 2013, as George Dvorsky reports for Gizmodo. (It’s worth noting that the team studying the foal has also expressed hopes of cloning a woolly mammoth.) Significantly, the foal’s blood is a staggering 27,000 years older than this previous sample.

The NEFU and South Korean scientists behind the new research are so confident of their success that they have already begun searching for a surrogate mare to carry the cloned Lena horse and, in the words of the Siberian Times, fulfill “the historic role of giving birth to the comeback species.” It’s worth noting, however, that any acclaim is premature and, as Dvorsky writes, indicative of the “typical unbridled enthusiasm” seen in the Russian news outlet’s reports.

Speaking with CNN’s Mezzofiore, Grigoryev himself expressed doubts about the researcher’s chances, explaining, “I think that even the unique preservation [of] blood is absolutely hopeless for cloning purposes since the main blood cells … do not have nuclei with DNA.”

He continued, “We [are] trying to find intact cells in muscle tissue and internal organs that are also very well-preserved.”

What the Siberian Times fails to address are the manifold “ethical and technological” questions raised by reviving long-gone species. Among other concerns, according to Dvorsky, scientists have cited the clone’s diminished quality of life, issues of genetic diversity and inbreeding, and the absence of an adequate Ice Age habitat.

It remains to be seen whether the Russian-South Korean team can actually deliver on its ambitious goal. Still, if the purported July 2018 resurrection of two similarly aged 40,000-year-old roundworms “defrosted” after millennia in the Arctic permafrost is any indication, the revival of ancient animals is becoming an increasingly realistic possibility.

The newly discovered fossils are 200,000 years old in Denisova Cave

Scientists have discovered the earliest remains of a human lineage known as the Denisovans. Researchers have identified stone artifacts connected to these ancient ancestors of contemporary humans using these 200,000-year-old bones for the first time, according to a new study.

The DNA study of a tooth and a little finger bone discovered in a cave named Denisova in Siberia’s Altai highlands provided our first tantalizing sight of the Denisovans in 2010.

The fossil record of these mysterious individuals is extremely limited, with only four bits of bone and teeth and a jawbone discovered in Tibet.

Their DNA, however, has indicated that they had a common ancestor with the Neanderthals and our species, Homo sapiens, some 765,000 years ago.

After this ancestor population split, our branch of the human family tree remained in Africa, while the Neanderthal/Denisovan branch moved into Eurasia.

By 430,000 years ago, the Eurasian branch had split, giving rise to the Neanderthals in western Eurasia and the Denisovans in the east. It’s unclear why the Denisovans and Neanderthals split, but a recent theory argues that when the Arctic ice sheet moved southwards to the Black Sea, cutting Europe off from Asia, it split the early humans into the east and west groups indicated above.

We now know that Denisovans are bred with modern humans in at least two places: in East Asia and further south-east in Indonesia or Australasia.

Three more Denisovan fossils have been unearthed in Denisova Cave by experts. Scientists believe they are roughly 200,000 years old, making them the oldest Denisovans yet discovered. Previously, the oldest known Denisovan specimens ranged in age from 122,000 to 194,000 years.

In the new study, researchers analyzed 3,800 bone fragments from Denisova Cave. They searched for proteins they knew were Denisovan based on previous DNA research.

The experts discovered five human bones among the remains. Four of them had enough DNA to be identified: one was Neanderthal, and the other three were Denisovan. Two of these fossils may have come from the same person or from related people, based on genetic similarities.

“We were extremely excited to identify three new Denisovan bones amongst the oldest layers of Denisova Cave,” study author Katerina Douka, an archaeological scientist at the University of Vienna in Austria, told Live Science. “We specifically targeted these layers where no other human fossils were found before, and our strategy worked.”

The age of these Denisovan fossils was calculated by the researchers based on the stratum of soil in which they were discovered. This stratum also contains a plethora of stone objects and animal bones, which might provide important archaeological insights about Denisovan life and behavior. Previously, Denisovan fossils were only discovered in levels devoid of such archaeological material, or in layers that may have also held Neanderthal material.

These newly discovered Denisovans lived in a time when, according to a prior study, the temperature was warm and similar to today’s, and they lived in a habitat that featured broad-leaved woods and open grassland. The Denisovans may have eaten deer, gazelles, horses, bison, and woolly rhinoceroses, according to butchered and burned animal remains discovered in the cave.

“This is the first time we can be sure that Denisovans were the makers of the archaeological remains we found associated with their bone fragments,” Katerina Douka said.

The stone artifacts discovered in the same strata as these Denisovan fossils are largely scraping implements that may be employed to deal with animal skins. The raw materials for these things most likely originated from river silt right outside the cave’s entrance, and the river most likely aided the Denisovans in their hunting efforts, according to the experts.

There are no direct analogs to the stone tools associated with these new fossils in North or Central Asia. They do, however, bore some similarities to artifacts discovered in Israel between 250,000 and 400,000 years ago – a time period associated with key advances in human technology, such as the widespread use of fire, according to the researchers.

The researchers published their findings online in the journal Nature Ecology & Evolution.

Scientists dissect 3,500-year-old bear discovered in Siberian permafrost

A brown bear that lay almost perfectly preserved in the frozen wilds of eastern Siberia for 3,500 years has undergone a necropsy by a team of scientists after it was discovered by reindeer herders on a desolate island in the Arctic.

“This find is absolutely unique: the complete carcass of an ancient brown bear,” said Maxim Cheprasov, laboratory chief at the Lazarev Mammoth Museum Laboratory at the North-Eastern Federal University in Yakutsk, eastern Siberia.

The female bear was found by reindeer herders in 2020 jutting out of the permafrost on Bolshoy Lyakhovsky Island, part of the New Siberian archipelago around 4,600 km east of Moscow.

Because it was found just east of the Bolshoy Etherican River, it has been named the Etherican brown bear.

The extreme temperatures helped preserve the bear’s soft tissue for 3,460 years, as well as remains of its final repasts – bird feathers and plants. The bear is described as being 1.55 metres (5.09 ft) tall and weighing nearly 78 kg (12 stone).

“For the first time, a carcass with soft tissues has fallen into the hands of scientists, giving us the opportunity to study the internal organs and examine the brain,” said Cheprasov.

The scientific team in Siberia cut through the bear’s tough hide, allowing scientists to examine its brain, internal organs and carry out a host of cellular, microbiological, virological and genetic studies.

The pink tissue and yellow fat of the bear was clearly visible as the team dissected the ancient beast.

They also sawed through its skull, using a vacuum cleaner to suck up the skull bone dust, before extracting its brain.

“Genetic analysis has shown that the bear does not differ in mitochondrial DNA from the modern bear from the north-east of Russia – Yakutia and Chukotka,” Cheprasov said.

He said the bear was probably aged about 2-3 years. It died from an injury to its spinal column.

It is, though, unclear how the bear came to be on the island, which is now divided from the mainland by a 50 km (31 mile) strait. It may have crossed over ice, it might have swum over, or the island might still have been part of the mainland.

The Lyakhovsky islands contain some of the richest palaeontological treasures in the world, attracting both scientists and ivory traders hunting for woolly mammoths.