Scientists may have discovered 12,000 year old mother's milk, frozen in permafrost

Siberian Times ^ | March 21, 2016 | reporter

[SunkenCiv]

The carcass of one of a pair of extinct big cat cubs will be scrutinised this autumn with the realistic possibility that a liquid found in the remains of the animal is milk from the mother.

Separately, it was recently revealed that samples of the prehistoric infant are being examined by South Korean to clone an animal that once occupied Eurasia from modern day Great Britain to the extreme east of Russia. A source close to the case told The Siberian Times that there is 'hope' the frozen remains of a cave lion cub will show evidence of its mother's milk.

Experts do not want to draw premature conclusions but they have 'reason to believe' that the well-preserved innards of two cave lion cubs -- one of which will be subjected to an autopsy, the other preserved for future study -- contains an opaque white fluid that will prove to be from an extinct lactating lioness...

The cubs were dug from their icy grave 'complete with all their body parts: fur, ears, soft tissue and even whiskers', said Dr Albert Protopopov, head of the mammoth fauna studies department of the Yakutian Academy of Sciences...

Cave lions -- Panthera spelaea (Goldfuss) -- lived during Middle and Late Pleistocene times on the Eurasian continent, from the British Isles to Chukotka in the extreme east of Russia, and they also roamed Alaska and northwestern Canada.

Research on the two cubs could help to explain why the species died out around 10,000 years ago, since the animal had few predators, was smaller than herbivores, and was not prone to getting bogged down in swamps, as did woolly mammoths and rhinos. One theory is that a sudden decline in deer and cave bears, their prey, caused the demise of the species.

[gleeaikin]

It was probably cooler then. And besides it was 12,000 years ago not 10. Around 12,800ya there was probably a major northern hemisphere bolide strike, see the book posted by SC. Then for around 1500 years there was a sharp cooling called the Younger Dryas. Mammoths may have been flash frozen by the bolide strike, even with undigested plants in their stomachs. After the YD ended there have been periodic warmer and cooler phases, but not like the YD.

[Perchant]

Your excuse doesn’t make any sense because the flash frozen animals are in the same state today. It’s not the cooling you need to find an excuse for but rather the warming that provided the food for these animals just prior to them being flash frozen. It was warmer then than it has been afterwards or the animals would have decomposed. You’ll likely find that the freshest seeds and grasses preserved in the permafrost is the same age as these preserved animals.

[gleeaikin]

First of all I provided an explanation or hypothesis, not an excuse. Excuse implies making an apology for. This was not an apology but an attempt at scientific discourse. If the major bolide strike hypothesized by Firestone et al occurred in warm weather, then the food in the animals and the surrounding ground would all have warm weather flora. It is hypothesized that a bolide strike the size large enough to plunge the earth into 1,500 of Younger Dryas cooling could have caused such a disruption in the atmosphere as to cause short term super cooling, thus flash frozen animals with undecomposed and undigested plant food in their bodies. Your last sentence would be correct under these circumstances.

[SunkenCiv]

Note: this topic is from 03/31/2016. Just an update.

join or quit view topics view or post blog bookmark post new topic subscribe