Prehistoric Cave Bear melts out of the ice in Siberia.

 

Looks like he was slurping up some pre historic Pleistocene blueberries when he died.

The body of an Ice Age cave bear has been discovered in exceptional condition on Bolshoy Lyakhovsky Island in Siberia. 

Bolshoy Lyakhovsky Island, or Great Lyakhovsky, is the largest of the Lyakhovsky Islands belonging to the New Siberian Islands archipelago between the Laptev Sea and the East Siberian Sea in northern Russia.  

It was discovered by reindeer herders in the melting permafrost. They were just in time, because the exposed carcass would have decomposed rapidly after losing its frozen home. Instead, it is impeccably preserved, complete with all of its internal organs, soft tissues, fur, gums, teeth, even its nose. A frozen cub has been found before, and skeletal remains of adults, but this is the first intact adult cave bear ever discovered.

The remains have been recovered and will be studied by by scientists at the North-Eastern Federal University (NEFU) in Yakutsk, which is home to the Mammoth Museum Laboratory, the world’s premier institution dedicated to the study of mammoth and other Ice Age fauna.

Preliminary "smart science guy" guesses put the age of this Yogi at between 22k and 39.5k years old.  Cave bears became extinct about 15k years ago.

That's not "perfectly preserved."

I'd be interested to know if they can recover intact DNA out of this, and make a new one.

And what else lurks frozen, for now, in the icy wastes of Siberia?

From the always good History Blog.