{"id":409475,"date":"2026-01-15T20:50:16","date_gmt":"2026-01-15T20:50:16","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/409475\/"},"modified":"2026-01-15T20:50:16","modified_gmt":"2026-01-15T20:50:16","slug":"wolf-pups-stomach-yields-dna-from-one-of-worlds-last-surviving-woolly-rhinos","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/409475\/","title":{"rendered":"Wolf pup\u2019s stomach yields DNA from one of world\u2019s last surviving woolly rhinos"},"content":{"rendered":"<p> <img decoding=\"async\" class=\"figure__image\" alt=\"Illustration of a woolly rhinoceros with two horns, one very large, a humped back and thick coat of long hair, walking across a steppe landscape with its calf\" loading=\"lazy\" src=\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/01\/d41586-026-00161-3_51943788.jpg\"\/><\/p>\n<p class=\"figure__caption u-sans-serif\">Woolly rhinos (Coelodonta antiquitatis) lived in Eurasia during the Pleistocene period (artist\u2019s impression).Credit: Mark P. Witton\/SPL<\/p>\n<p>Roughly 14,400 years ago in what is now Russia, a wolf pup feasted on the meat of a woolly rhinoceros (Coelodonta antiquitatis) that probably belonged to one of the last populations of the species. A genomic analysis<a href=\"#ref-CR1\" data-track=\"click\" data-action=\"anchor-link\" data-track-label=\"go to reference\" data-track-category=\"references\">1<\/a> of the woolly rhino tissue found inside the stomach of an ice age wolf (Canis lupis) revealed that woolly rhino\u2019s extinction occurred rapidly soon after.<\/p>\n<p>The analysis suggests that the woolly rhino, which lived in northern Europe and Asia, went extinct because of a swift population collapse that might have been caused by a warming climate. The findings were published on 14 January in Genome Biology and Evolution.<\/p>\n<p>Finding one of the last members of a species is very rare, says molecular ecologist Morten Allentoft at Curtin University in Perth, Australia. \u201cYou actually have access and direct insights into the gene pool of a species just as it\u2019s disappearing,\u201d he adds.<\/p>\n<p>Nic Rawlence, a palaeoecologist at the University of Otago in Dunedin, New Zealand, says that it is even more amazing that the team could generate a genome from the sample. \u201cThe study adds another important time point in the evolutionary story of woolly rhino,\u201d he says.<\/p>\n<p>Mistaken identity<\/p>\n<p>Radiocarbon dating of the youngest known woolly rhino samples suggests that the species went extinct about 14,000 years ago<a href=\"#ref-CR2\" data-track=\"click\" data-action=\"anchor-link\" data-track-label=\"go to reference\" data-track-category=\"references\">2<\/a>. Love Dal\u00e9n, an evolutionary genomics researcher at the Centre for Palaeogenetics in Stockholm, and his team radiocarbon-dated the woolly rhino tissue to 14,400 years ago, making it one of the last known members of the species.<\/p>\n<p>Dal\u00e9n says that the sample was discovered during an autopsy of the puppy, and he and his colleagues received the sample because researchers initially thought that it belonged to a cave lion (Panthera spelaea), a species they were studying. But when they extracted DNA to map against a cave lion reference genome, it was not a match, instead belonging to a woolly rhino.<\/p>\n<p><img decoding=\"async\" class=\"figure__image\" alt=\"Composite image of two scientists performing an autopsy on a mummified wolf puppy, and a fragment of woolly rhinoceros tissue which appears to be covered in long hairs\" loading=\"lazy\" src=\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/01\/d41586-026-00161-3_51943786.jpg\"\/><\/p>\n<p class=\"figure__caption u-sans-serif\">During the autopsy of this mummified wolf puppy (left), a piece of woolly rhino tissue was found in the animal\u2019s stomach.Credit: Mietje Germonpr\u00e9; Love Dal\u00e9n<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Woolly rhinos (Coelodonta antiquitatis) lived in Eurasia during the Pleistocene period (artist\u2019s impression).Credit: Mark P. Witton\/SPL Roughly 14,400&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":409476,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[32],"tags":[200,9171,1159,1160,56493,79],"class_list":["post-409475","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-science","tag-genetics","tag-genomics","tag-humanities-and-social-sciences","tag-multidisciplinary","tag-palaeontology","tag-science"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/409475","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=409475"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/409475\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/409476"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=409475"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=409475"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=409475"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}