3,500-year-old bear’s autopsy reveals more about the animal and her last meal

A perfectly preserved brown bear in the wilds of Siberia has been found, and it's thought that it lived approximately 3500 years ago.

After being discovered by reindeer herders in 2020, North-Eastern Federal University researchers in Yakutsk have been conducting an autopsy to learn more about the bear. 

Named after the Etherican River, the Etherican brown bear's soft tissue and last meal remained well-preserved thanks to extreme weather conditions, reported NBC News. The bear is estimated to be 5 feet tall (152.4 cm) and weighs over 172 pounds (78 kg).

"This find is absolutely unique: the complete carcass of an ancient brown bear," said Maxim Cheprasov, laboratory chief at the Lazarev Mammoth Museum Laboratory at the North-Eastern Federal University in Yakutsk.

"For the first time, a carcass with soft tissues has fallen into the hands of scientists, giving us the opportunity to study the internal organs and examine the brain," he added.

The team also found the bear's final meal intact - bird feathers and plants.

The Siberian team cut through the bear's skin, allowing scientists to inspect its brain and internal organs and conduct various cellular, microbiological, virological, and genetic tests.

They also sawed through its skull, sucking off the skull bone dust with a vacuum cleaner before retrieving its brain.

“Genetic analysis has shown that the bear does not differ in mitochondrial DNA from the modern bear from the north-east of Russia — Yakutia and Chukotka,” Cheprasov said.

The bear might have perished from a spinal injury, according to Cheprasov. How the bear got to the island, now separated from the mainland, is still a mystery.

The island might still have been a part of the mainland, it might have swum over, or it might have crossed over ice.

A lion cab also has been found in Siberia before

Sparta, a 28,000-year-old cave lion cub, has been found in Siberia before. The ice has mummified her skin, teeth, and other soft tissue. Sparta was discovered in 2018 by Boris Berezhnev, a Yakutian who was searching for old mammoth tusks on the tundra. A year before locating Sparta near the Semyuelyakh River, he observed another cave lion named Boris, 49 feet (15 meters) away.

Swedish specialists who later helped study the carcasses believe that Sparta and Boris were born between one and two months ago. Even though they are physically similar and live close by, Boris is thought to be roughly 15,000 years older, give or take a few centuries.