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Fossils of the Wolf (Canis sp.) from the Middle Reaches of the Indigirka River from the Late Pleistocene in Yakutia

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Abstract

Descriptions of a mummified remains of the head and part of the neck of a wolf (Canis sp.), found in August 2018 on the bank of the Tirekhtyakh River (Yakutia), are given. The preservation of the find (soft tissues, hair, muscle tissue, and skin) allows us to determine the color of the hair and its length in different parts of the head and neck. In addition, it was possible to measure the skull without violating the integrity of the object and while maintaining its attractiveness using computed tomography and 3D visualization programs. According to the results of our research, the separation of the head from the body occurred under the influence of permafrost. No traces of the influence of an ancient person or any animal on the sample were found. Judging by the size and degree of abrasion of the exposed teeth, as well as by the ratio of the total width and the width of the pulp cavity of the upper canine, the individual age of the studied sample is from 1 to 1.5 years. The absolute age of the find corresponds to the Karginskii time of the Late Pleistocene.

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ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

The authors express their gratitude to I.S. Pavlov, research engineer of the Department for the Study of the Mammoth Fauna of the Academy of Sciences of the Republic of Sakha (Yakutia) for providing the material and V.V. Bochkarev, researcher with the Yaroslavskii Yakutsk State United Museum of the History and Culture of the Peoples of the North (Republic of Sakha, Yakutia).

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Academy of Sciences of the Sakha (Yakutia), Department of the Study of Mammoth Fauna, 677007, Yakutsk, Russia

    V. V. Plotnikov & A. V. Protopopov

  2. The Jikei University School of Medicine, Institute for High Dimensional Medical Imaging, 163-8001, Токyо, Japan

    Naoki Suzuki

  3. Department of Bioinformatics and Genetics, Swedish Museum of Natural History, 10405, Stockholm, Sweden

    Love Dalen

Authors
  1. V. V. Plotnikov
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  2. A. V. Protopopov
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  3. Naoki Suzuki
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  4. Love Dalen
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Corresponding authors

Correspondence to V. V. Plotnikov, A. V. Protopopov, Naoki Suzuki or Love Dalen.

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The authors declare that they have no conflicts of interest. This article does not contain any studies involving animals or human participants performed by any of the authors.

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Translated by M. Shulskaya

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Plotnikov, V.V., Protopopov, A.V., Suzuki, N. et al. Fossils of the Wolf (Canis sp.) from the Middle Reaches of the Indigirka River from the Late Pleistocene in Yakutia. Biol Bull Russ Acad Sci 50, 1429–1437 (2023). https://doi.org/10.1134/S1062359023070191

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1134/S1062359023070191

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