Woolly rhino mummy found in Russian Far East confirms a feature seen in cave art

Three woolly rhinoceros mummies have been unearthed from Yakutia, or the Sakha Republic, in northeastern Russia. The discovery was revealed by Gennady Boeskorov and his colleagues in a paper published in the journal Doklady Earth Sciences in July this year.

The three of them are vastly different in age and preservation, with one of them being new to science, the paper says.

Boeskorov is a senior researcher at the Diamond and Precious Metals Geology Institute, Siberian Branch of the Russian Academy of Sciences. He is also a professor at the North-Eastern Federal University in Yakutsk.

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They say that while woolly rhino fossils are abundant, their mummies are exceedingly rare. Only a handful of nearly complete woolly rhinos have been found to date, Ars Technica reported.

Woolly rhinos (Coelodonta antiquitatis) lived in Eurasia during the Pleistocene period when the most recent glacial expansion occurred. They were stocky, long-haired, and had two horns. They lived at the same time as the woolly mammoths and were the second-most largest animals in this ecosystem.

Two juvenile rhino mummies

The most well-preserved of the three mummies is of Sasha, the first complete baby woolly rhino ever discovered. It still has its fluffy strawberry-blonde head, a couple of legs, and much of its fluffy torso. While the gender could not be ascertained, researchers say that Sasha was between 12 and 18 months old at the time of its death, based on its teeth and the sutures within its skull.

"We’ve learned a great deal from their bones; we’re learning even more thanks to their mummies. Being able to directly observe their hair and skin, for example, offers more evidence regarding just how well-adapted these animals were to their harsh environment," Boeskorov says.

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Its frontal horn is worn out, possibly because of “rubbing against its mother’s belly” while nursing, scientists suggested in 2015. This rhino, found in 2014, likely drowned in mud.

The second mummy, discovered in 2020, is missing much of one side of its body, including most of the intestines. The other side still has skin, some hair, and soft tissues. It was discovered in Yakutia’s Abyisky District in 2020 and so was nicknamed the “Abyisky rhinoceros”. It was likely 4 to 4.5 years of age at the time of its death and was also found along the banks of a river.

Oldest mummy

The oldest of the three mummies is the Kolyma mummy, which was uncovered in 2007 in a Kolyma gold mine. It was female, the presence of udder and nipples suggests. It likely fell into and was trapped within a confined space. Only one side of her body is preserved. The transverse stripes on her horn, along with teeth, skull, and height, suggest she was about 20 years of age at the time of her death.

What has fascinated scientists the most is the presence of a fatty hump on the back of the Abyisky woolly rhino. He told Ars Technica that it likely served as an "additional reservoir of nutrients.” Since a hump has never been seen before on any of the woolly rhino mummies, Boeskorov thinks it might have only developed closer to winter for fat storage.