40,000-year-old wolf head found in Siberia. Creepy, but fascinating.

The perfectly preserved decapitated head of a Pleistocene wolf has been found above the Arctic Circle north of Yakutia, Siberia.

The wolf was a fully grown adult between two and four years old when it died.  Interestingly, a CT scan of the head revealed that some parts of the skull are more developed than those areas are in the skulls of today’s wolves. 

How the wolf’s head became detached from its body is unknown, but it was almost certainly not cut off by people as there is no evidence humans inhabited the gelid region 40,000 years ago. Its likely that it was severed by ice. Expanding ice often beheads dead animals trapped in it, leaving characteristic traces on the soft tissue. Researchers in this area have seen this phenomenon at work. The ice acts like an axe or a knife, cutting cleanly through necks. It’s possible some other force was involved in the decapitation of this wolf, however, because the cut is more ragged than ice expansion cuts usually are. A trace expert will be called in to examine specimens taken from the sever point under a microscope.

No other parts of the wolf have been found so far. Researchers plan to visit the find site to excavate it looking for additional remains.

For more good stuff on this, go over to the History Blog