Picture a big, barrel-chested animal, rather front-heavy, with long, powerful forelimbs, short, heavily muscled hindquarters, a short, lynx-like tail, and huge shoulders. The creature has an enormous, thick neck, a big head with deep jaws, and two long, horrifying canines, the size of bananas, hanging from its upper jaw. It’s built more like a bear, built to hold struggling prey down and deliver a killing blow with those fearsome fangs, but what you’re picturing is a cat. In North America, the sabertooth type is best known for the fearsome Smilodon fatalis, but in Siberia, the sabertooths were smaller, and more lightly built. They had smaller fangs, leading the the name “scimitar-tooth,” and a common genus was Homotherium.
In 2020, a Homotherium latidens kitten was found frozen in the Siberian permafrost, mummified but amazingly well-preserved; its fur, whiskers, and even the pads on its feet are present. It’s one of the best-preserved remnants of any sabertooth found, and now researchers have released some information on this amazing little beast.
Researchers have pulled the mummy of a newborn saber-toothed cat that died at least 35,000 years ago from Siberia’s permafrost — and the kitten still has its whiskers and claws attached.
A new analysis of the kitten’s stunningly-preserved head and upper body shows it was just 3 weeks old when it died in what is now Russia’s northeastern Sakha Republic, also known as Yakutia. Scientists found pelvic bones, a femur and shin bones encased in a block of ice together with the mummy. The circumstances of the animal’s death are unknown.
The cause of death is unknown, but the fact of death as a kitten is not surprising; for large predators in general, the rate of death in infancy and youth is shocking. As few as one in four big cats live to adulthood in some environments, and Ice Age Siberia was hardly a friendly place. Even so, this little guy was a stout fellow.
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 that of a modern 3-week-old lion (Panthera leo) cub and found the saber-toothed kitten had wider paws and no carpal pads — pads on the wrist joint that act as shock absorbers in today’s felines. These adaptations enabled saber-toothed cats to walk with ease in snow, while thick, soft fur observed on the mummy shielded the predators against polar temperatures.
The comparison with the lion revealed that saber-toothed cats had a larger mouth, smaller ears, longer forelimbs, darker hair and a much thicker neck. Researchers already knew from studying the skeletons of adult Holotherium that these saber-toothed cats had short bodies and elongated limbs, but the new research shows these features were already present at the age of 3 weeks.
There is no indication that any DNA was recovered, and given the age of the remains, that’s not surprising. So there won’t be any clones.
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It’s amazing to consider that this kitten, whose fur, whiskers, and features we can examine and see how different it is from any cat alive today, was born into a very different world. Oh, there were people around, hunting great deer, mammoth, and reindeer on the steppe and in the forests; this kitten’s parents very likely encountered them. These cats shared their environment not only with the mammoths, but with wooly rhinos, megaloceros, and other now-vanished critters. It’s fun to think about when you look at this little guy’s remains.
It’s also nice to see some actual scientific inquiry still going on in the world.
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Siberia has been the source of some neat such mummified, frozen finds — mammoth, bison, horses, and more. Mammoth tusks have been dug out of the permafrost in the thousands. It makes one curious as to what they may find next.
