China News Service, February 24th. According to the Taiwan United News Network, recently, an explorer accidentally excavated a "permafrost bird" in the permafrost layer of Siberia. It was identified as a lark bird 46,000 years ago. As if just died. Experts say the "permanent frozen bird" is the ancestor of the two Lark subspecies today.
Image source: CNN report screenshot.
A paper in "Communication Biology" on the 21st pointed out that the bird was buried in permafrost near the village of Belaya Gora in northeastern Siberia, was found by local ivory fossil hunters, and was handed over to the Swedish Natural History Museum .
Experts such as Nicholas Dussex and Love Darren have been identified by radiocarbon dating, this bird lived 46,000 years ago and has been genetically analyzed as a horned lark.
Darren said that the bird may be the ancestor of two living Lark subspecies today, one in northern Russia and the other in the Mongolian steppe. The discovery implies that the climate change that occurred at the end of the last ice age led to the new subspecies Birth.
He also said that the next phase of research will sequence the entire genome of the "permafrost", which will reveal more information about the relationship between the "permafrost" and today's subspecies, and estimate the evolution and change of lark. rate.
Dussex said these findings are "priceless" because they enable researchers to search DNA and also RNA that is found in all living cells. Backtracking will open up new possibilities for studying the evolution of fauna during the Ice Age. Opportunities and learn how they responded to climate change in the past 500,000 to 10 million years ago.
In addition, a "frozen dog" was also found at the same location. Using carbon testing, experts confirmed that the specimen had been frozen for about 18,000 years, but so far, various DNA tests have not confirmed that the dog is a dog. Still a wolf. Scientists can usually tell the difference easily, and the team hopes to conduct further tests to better understand when dogs are domesticated.
The report said that the discovery revealed the scene at the end of the Ice Age about 11,700 years ago, and also gave a glimpse into how the Mammoth steppe is divided into three biological environments (steppe, coniferous forest, tundra). It is reported that the area was originally the home of extinct species such as mammoth and woolly rhinoceros.