Scientists find a 35,000-year-old saber-toothed kitten in the Siberian permafrost

[Jilly_in_VA]

An ancient cat was found almost perfectly preserved in Siberia's permafrost.

Researchers found the mummy of a 35,000-year-old saber-toothed cub in what is now Russia's northeastern Sakha Republic, also known as Yakutia, in 2020. A study published this past week in the journal Scientific Reports shows that the cat was just three weeks old when it died, but its cause of death is unknown.

The kitten still had its whiskers and claws attached when it was pulled out of the permafrost, and was covered in a coat of "short, thick, soft, dark brown fur." Its hair was about 20 to 30 millimeters long, according to researchers.

The remarkable preservation provided a unique opportunity for researchers to study the extinct animal.

"For the first time in the history of paleontology, the appearance of an extinct mammal that has no analogues in the modern fauna has been studied," the paper's authors write.

https://www.npr.org/2024/11/16/nx-s1-5193845/35000-year-old-kitten-siberia-frozen

Poor little guy.

[Dennis Donovan]

1. "Poor little guy"

...was my first thought as well. 😿

[hlthe2b]

2. I always become amused when 20 to 30 millimeters rather than 2-3 centimeters is used in such articles...

Does the general American public have a better appreciation for 20 millimeters than 2 centimeters? Just a curious notion, this morning (ignoring the issue of centimeters vs inches for the moment, (which btw would be a little less than 3/4 of an inch to about 1 1/4 inch).


A fascinating discovery, though.

[eppur_se_muova]

4. Scientists generally avoid SI prefixes which do not designate powers of 1000.

Deci, deka, centi, hecto are generally deprecated in practice, though AFAIK are still perfectly legitimate, officially, and this is more of a cultural preference than anything. If some scientific society has an official policy of discouraging these in print, I remain ignorant of it, but it's not like I've been paying it a lot of attention.

It does lead to some simplification. Unfortunately, many reference tables and standard values, particularly in medicine, use odd units like dm3 (cubed) or dl. Of course "ccs", for cubic centimeters, is almost slang now; I think every medical show on TV uses it, so the public hears it often. The dm3 is the same as a liter, and a cc is the same as a milliliter, so no loss in abandoning those terms, but medicine is stuck on "cc".

Ten(th)s and hundred(th)s do make some sense in the "real world" human scales of commerce, machinery, clothing, and cooking, but their absence from a scientific communication is unsurprising.

[sinkingfeeling]

3. He looks adorable. Poor little guy.