35,000-year-old mummy of saber-toothed cat found frozen in Siberia

Researchers analyzed a mummy collected from permafrost in Siberia in 2020 and determined it was a 3-week-old saber-toothed cat that died at least 35,000 years ago.

A team of researchers unearthed the mummified remains of a newborn saber-toothed cat that died tens of thousands of years ago from the Siberian permafrost. The kitten still had its whiskers and claws intact. New analysis of the animal's head and upper body suggests it was just three weeks old when it died in what is now the Sakha Republic in northeastern Russia, also known as Yakutia. Scientists found the pelvis, femur, and lower leg bones encased in the same block of ice as the mummy. The circumstances of its death are unclear.

Mummified remains of a young saber-toothed cat. (Photo: Scientific Reports).

The complete remains of a saber-toothed cat are extremely rare . The mummy belongs to the extinct species Homotherium latidens , according to research published on November 14 in the journal Scientific Reports. Saber-toothed cats lived worldwide during the Pliocene (2.6 to 5.3 million years ago) and early Pleistocene (11,700 to 2.6 million years ago), but there is evidence that they were less widespread during the late Pleistocene (the last ice age).

"For a long time, the presence of H. latidens in Eurasia was recorded in the mid-Pleocene (126,000 - 770,000 years ago). The discovery of H. latidens mummies in Yakutia significantly expands the knowledge of their distribution and confirms their existence in Asia in the late Pleistocene ," said the team from the Borissiak Institute of Paleontology.

The tiny frozen mummy shows that H. latidens was well adapted to ice age conditions. The researchers compared it to a 3-week-old modern lion (Panthera leo) and found that the saber-toothed cat had wider paws and lacked the shock-absorbing pads found in today's big cats. These adaptations allowed the saber-toothed cat to walk easily in the snow, while its thick, soft fur protected it from the polar temperatures.

Comparisons with lions reveal that the saber-toothed cat had a large mouth, small ears, long forelimbs, dark fur, and a much thicker neck. Scientists already knew the cat had a short body and long limbs from skeletons of adult H. latidens, but the new study shows that these traits existed when the cats were 3 weeks old.

Radiocarbon dating of the mummy's fur revealed that the cat had been buried in permafrost for at least 35,000 to 37,000 years. The animal was collected from the banks of the Badyarikha River in Yakutia in 2020, allowing researchers to describe for the first time the physical characteristics of H. latidens, including fur texture, muzzle shape, and muscle mass distribution. Notably, the mummy retained sharp claws and whiskers, but no eyelashes.