‘Brown blob’ found by miners in Canada is actually 30,000-year-old mummified squirrel
.png "The squirrel lived during the last ice age.")
In 2018, a group of gold miners were perusing the Klondike Gold Fields in the Yukon region of Canada when they stumbled upon a “brown blob.”
The dark mass, about the size of a human hand, appeared to be covered in fur.
“I’m really impressed that someone recognized it for what it was. From the outside, it just kind of looks like a brown blob. It looks a bit like a brown rock,” Grant Zazula, a Yukon government paleontologist, told the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation.
The miners had actually discovered a mummified squirrel — from about 30,000 years ago, according to the Yukon Beringia Interpretive Centre.
“It looks like basically a ball of old, dry leather,” Zazula told McClatchy News. “But if you look close you can see a little hair, you can see ears and see some hands.”
After the discovery, experts used X-rays to confirm the remains belonged to an arctic ground squirrel that had lived during the last ice age, the organization wrote in a March 27 Facebook post.
“It’s amazing to think that this little guy was running around the Yukon several thousand years ago,” the organization said.
Researchers believe the squirrel died while hibernating, Zazula said.
“Squirrels up here, in the winter or the fall time, they go underground and hbernate for seven or eight months of the year,” he said. “This particular squirrel obviously didn’t live. He died during hibernation and then his whole body was preserved.”
The find is especially exciting because ground squirrels still exist in the region today.
“They’re quite intriguing because they lived in the north and the Arctic for millions of years, at least a couple of million years, and they never went extinct,” Zazula said. “They provide a really interesting lesson in terms of climate change and how animals like this can adapt to changing conditions in the Arctic.”
The squirrel will go on display at the Yukon Beringia Interpretive Centre soon, according to the organization. It will be exhibited alongside similar fossils.
Canada’s Yukon region is in the westernmost area of Canada, straddling the Alaskan border.
This story was originally published April 6, 2023 at 12:50 PM with the headline "‘Brown blob’ found by miners in Canada is actually 30,000-year-old mummified squirrel."
