2023-05-01 04:41:32
A “mysterious lump of fur”, which was found frozen in northern Canada, caused a stir in the scientific community, after it was concluded that it represented a mummified 30,000-year-old squirrel.
Experts believe the Ice Age creature may have been hibernating at the time of its death, because it was discovered curled up into a ball.
It was found in 2018 by miners in the Yukon Territory, near the Alaskan border.
“It’s completely unrecognizable until you see the little hands and the claws, and you see the little tail, and then you see the ears,” Grant Zazulla, a paleontologist with the Yukon government, told CBC.
“When you see a perfectly preserved animal, it’s 30,000 years old, and you can see its face, its skin, its hair and all that, it’s just incredible.”
Researchers named the mummified Arctic squirrel “Hester” because it was found near Hester Creek in Canada, near Dawson City.
This area previously discovered many well-preserved animal specimens from tens of thousands of years ago, including giant beavers, small mammoths, and wolf pups.
“It’s amazing to think that this little animal ran all over the Yukon several thousand years ago,” the Yukon government wrote in a Facebook post about the squirrel last month.
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