40,000-Year-Old ‘Permafrost Bird’ Discovered; Experts Say It’s Ancestor of Two Skylark Subspecies
Chinanet, February 24, reported by Taiwan United News. Recently, explorers in Siberia's permafrost accidentally unearthed a 'permafrost bird,' identified as a skylark from 4.6 years ago, appearing as if it had just died. Experts said that this 'permafrost bird' is the ancestor of the two extant skylark subspecies.
Image source: CNN report screenshot.
On February 21, a paper in 'Communications Biology' indicated that the bird was buried in the permafrost near Belaya Gora Village in northeastern Siberia and was discovered by local ivory fossil hunters, subsequently handed over to the Swedish Museum of Natural History.
Through the radiometric carbon dating method by experts such as Nicholas Dussieux and Love Darren, it was identified that the bird lived 4.6 years ago, with genetic analysis confirming it was a horned skylark.
Darren said that this bird may be the ancestor of the two extant skylark subspecies, one in northern Russia and the other in the Mongolian steppe. This discovery suggests that climate changes at the end of the last ice age led to the birth of new subspecies.
He also said that the next stage of research will sequence the entire genome of the 'permafrost bird,' which will reveal more information about the relationship between the 'permafrost bird' and the extant subspecies, and estimate the rate of evolution and change of skylarks.
Dussieux said that these discoveries are 'priceless,' because they allow researchers to retrieve DNA, and can retrieve RNA existing in all living cells, reverse-tracing, which will open up new opportunities for studying the evolution of ice age animals and understanding how they responded to climate changes in the past 50 to 1000 years.
In addition, a 'permafrost dog' was also discovered at the same location, using carbon detection, experts confirmed that the specimen had been frozen for about 1.8 years, but so far, various DNA tests have not been able to confirm whether the canine is a dog or a wolf. Scientists can easily distinguish the differences, and the team hopes to further test to better understand when dogs were domesticated.
The report revealed the scene at the end of the Laurentian Ice Sheet approximately 1.17 years ago, and gave a glimpse of how the Mammoth Steppe was divided into 3 biomes (grassland, coniferous forest, and tundra). Originally, this area was the homeland of extinct species such as the woolly mammoth and the saber-toothed cat.
Editor: Liu Yanjun
