A wolf pup’s stomach produces DNA from one of the world’s last surviving woolly rhinos

About 14,400 years ago, in what is now Russia, a wolf pup fed on the meat of a woolly rhinoceros (Coelodonta from ancient times) which probably belongs to one of the last groups of this type. Genome analysis¹ From woolly rhinoceros tissue found inside the stomach of an Ice Age wolf (Dogs and wolves) that the extinction of the woolly rhinoceros occurred quickly and soon after.

The analysis suggests that the woolly rhinoceros, which used to live in northern Europe and Asia, has become extinct due to a rapid population collapse that may have been caused by a warming climate. The results were published on January 14 Genome biology and evolution.

Finding one of the last organs of a species is very rare, says Morten Allentoft, a molecular ecologist at Curtin University in Perth, Australia. “In effect, you have direct access and insights into the gene pool of a species once it disappears,” he adds.

What’s even more surprising is that the team was able to generate a genome from the sample, says Nick Rawlins, a paleoecologist at the University of Otago in Dunedin, New Zealand. “The study adds another important point in time in the evolutionary story of the woolly rhinoceros,” he says.

Wrong identity

Radiocarbon dating of the smallest known woolly rhinoceros specimens indicates that the species became extinct about 14,000 years ago.². Löw Dahlen, an evolutionary genomics researcher at the Center for Paleogenetics in Stockholm, and his team have radiocarbon dated woolly rhinoceros tissue to 14,400 years ago, making it one of the last known members of the species.

Dallin says the sample was discovered during an autopsy on the pup, and he and his colleagues obtained the sample because researchers initially thought it belonged to a cave lion (Sabelia tiger), which is the type they were studying. But when they extracted the DNA to map the cave lion reference genome, it wasn’t a match, but rather belonged to a woolly rhinoceros.