THE secrets of the woolly rhino’s demise has finally been revealed after stunned scientists found DNA in a place they weren’t expecting to find it.
In a world first discovery, experts have been able to shed light on why the creatures disappeared suddenly 14,400 years ago.
And it all came from the gut of an Ice Age wolf pup.
The female pup was only two months old when it tragically died after a suspected landslide collapsed their den.
Its well-preserved remains were uncovered near a Siberian village back in 2011.
And inside its stomach were tiny traces of the pup’s last meal before it had been fully digested, a woolly rhino.
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Scientists initially believed it was just a bit of lion tissue but further testing showed something far more unique.
“It was quite a surprise when the genetic analysis showed that it was actually a woolly rhinoceros,” said Dr David Stanton, from Cardiff University’s School of Biosciences who was part of the research.
“The date estimate, very close to when woolly rhinos went extinct, made it incredibly valuable for understanding how and why so many species went extinct at the time.”
But figuring out the DNA of this type of material is extremely difficult.
Specimens can be degraded after thousands of years and get mixed up with the predator’s own DNA too.
“Sequencing the entire genome of an Ice Age animal found in the stomach of another animal has never been done before,” explained Camilo Chacón-Duque, a researcher at the Centre for Palaeogenetics.
After painstaking work, they were able to identify some key information about the extinct creature.
Genetics provide no evidence of inbreeding as a possible cause of their demise, nor was there a long-term population decline due to human hunting.
Instead, their extinction happened pretty quickly and it’s believed to be due to the Ice Age ending.
“Our analyses showed a surprisingly stable genetic pattern with no change in inbreeding levels through tens of thousands of years prior to the extinction of woolly rhinos,” explained Edana Lord, formerly a postdoctoral researcher at the Centre for Palaeogenetics.
The research was published in the Genome Biology and Evolution journal.
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