\n
\n
![\"EarthSnap\"\/](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/12\/1766790432_598_earthsnap-banner-news.webp.webp\")
\n<\/a><\/p>\n
Inside a dried slab of skin roughly 12 by 8 inches, coarse hairs and flesh preserved a clear biological record of the animal.<\/p>\n
By analyzing that tissue, Sofia Selvatici at Sapienza University of Rome<\/a> documented that the specimen belonged to the North American porcupine.<\/p>\n That identification establishes the first known mummified remains of this species from ancient permafrost deposits.<\/p>\n The result fixes both the animal and its place in time, setting up the unexpected age revealed next.<\/p>\n Age broke expectations<\/p>\n The biggest surprise was not the species<\/a> but the clock, which placed the animal around 3,000 years old.<\/p>\n Two rounds of radiocarbon dating, which estimates age from radioactive carbon left in tissue, landed almost on top of each other.<\/p>\n Researchers had expected a relic from the last ice age, because the same mining ground often yields mammoths, bison, horses, and sheep.<\/p>\n Finding a much younger mummy meant the frozen ground had preserved a very different chapter of Yukon history.<\/p>\n Porcupine mummy\u2019s DNA gave answers<\/p>\n Millions of DNA fragments then sorted the animal from a crowd of likely mammals that lived in North America.<\/p>\n Against 18 reference genomes, porcupine DNA won easily, with 21,454 reads landing on Erethizon dorsatum and far fewer elsewhere.<\/p>\n A separate metagenomic check, which sorts mixed genetic scraps by species, pointed to the same animal again.<\/p>\n Using two routes to the same answer mattered<\/a>, because the flesh had lost the obvious body features that usually settle identification.<\/p>\n What the genome shows<\/p>\n From that tissue, the team rebuilt a mitochondrial genome, the small ring of DNA inside cell powerhouses.<\/p>\n Coverage reached 98%, enough to recover nearly the entire sequence and compare it with the only other full one known.<\/p>\n Its place in the phylogeny, a family tree built from DNA differences, set the mummy squarely among living porcupines.<\/p>\n Yet 440 DNA changes hint that western porcupines may have followed a path somewhat separate from populations farther east.<\/p>\n A male individual<\/p>\n Another puzzle fell when chromosome counts showed that the mummy was male, despite the species being hard to sex.<\/p>\n Living porcupines hide much of their anatomy, so DNA<\/a> offered a cleaner route by comparing X and Y patterns.<\/p>\n Because the sample carried only low amounts of the animal\u2019s own DNA, that agreement across several tests mattered.<\/p>\n That extra certainty lets researchers talk about one real animal, not just anonymous tissue in a museum drawer.<\/p>\n Forests changed the map<\/p>\n Porcupines likely reached Yukon only after spruce-rich forest moved north at the end of the last glacial era.<\/p>\n Those woods mattered because porcupines<\/a> eat bark, needles, buds, and leaves, and they spend much of life climbing.<\/p>\n Open grass-and-shrub country would have offered little cover and fewer trees, making the far northwest a poor long-term home.<\/p>\n That ecological timing helps explain why this mummy appears thousands of years after the great ice age mammals.<\/p>\n Signs of a newcomer<\/p>\n \u201cFossil records of porcupines are virtually absent from the region,\u201d wrote Sofia Selvatici, a Sapienza University of Rome researcher and first author.<\/p>\n Even so, older droppings from caves in Alaska and northern Yukon suggest the animal arrived at least 4,000 years ago.<\/p>\n That earlier sign fits the new mummy, which shows porcupines were already part of northern forest wildlife by 3,000 years ago.<\/p>\n For now, the record still looks thin, which keeps the exact timing and route of that northward spread unsettled.<\/p>\n People and Ts\u2019ey<\/p>\n People were already living in Yukon when porcupines moved into the region, so this was a shared northern story from the start.<\/p>\n For the Tr\u2019ondek Hwech\u2019in, a First Nation in Yukon, the porcupine, known as Ts\u2019ey in the H\u00e4n language, matters as food, medicine, and a source of quills for intricate clothing and art.<\/p>\n Older quillwork traditions used berry dyes and careful folding, wrapping, and stitching that turned sharp barbs into decoration.<\/p>\n Placing this animal in that human landscape gives the mummy cultural weight, not just scientific value.<\/p>\n Young mummies matter<\/p>\n Most Arctic animal<\/a> mummies come from colder stretches of the ice age, not the relatively mild span that followed.<\/p>\n That pattern makes this young porcupine notable, because it shows soft tissue can sometimes survive in post-ice-age ground too.<\/p>\n Rapid burial probably helped by shutting out scavengers, oxygen, and decay microbes before the remains broke apart.<\/p>\n As thaw and mining keep exposing old deposits, scientists may find more recent animals that were once written off as impossible.<\/p>\n Why this matters<\/p>\n A ragged piece of hide has become evidence that genes, climate, landscape, and culture can meet in one small animal.<\/p>\n \u201cAdditional research is needed to further resolve the history of colonization and dispersal,\u201d wrote Selvatici and colleagues in the study.<\/p>\n The study is published in Scientific Reports<\/a>.<\/p>\n \u2014\u2013<\/p>\n Like what you read? Subscribe to our newsletter<\/a> for engaging articles, exclusive content, and the latest updates.<\/p>\n Check us out on EarthSnap<\/a>, a free app brought to you by Eric Ralls<\/a> and Earth.com.<\/p>\n \u2014\u2013<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Scientists have identified a 3,000-year-old porcupine mummy preserved in permafrost and reconstructed its genetic sequence. The finding extends…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":373830,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[7],"tags":[85,46,141],"class_list":{"0":"post-373829","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-science","8":"tag-il","9":"tag-israel","10":"tag-science"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/373829","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=373829"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/373829\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/373830"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=373829"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=373829"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=373829"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}