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Cave Lion Cub Research Paper

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SALT LAKE CITY — For more than 30,000 years, northern Russia’s cold permafrost has preserved the small bodies of two furry and wide-pawed cave lion cubs, one of them in almost pristine condition, a new study found.

The two mummified cubs, nicknamed Uyan and Dina after the Uyandina River where they were found, were just about 1 week old when they died, likely crushed by “extensive collapse of the sediments in the den,” the study’s researchers wrote in a summary of their research. The report was presented as a poster here on Oct. 26 at the 2016 Society of Vertebrate Paleontology meeting.

uyan-cave-lion.jpg
The ancient cave lion cub named Uyan is so well preserved that researchers could tell that its mother fed it milk a few hours before it …show more content…

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The last known cave lion lived in what is now Alaska about 14,000 years ago, Potapova said. Little is known about the development of cave lions from cubs into adults, making the finding an extraordinary one, because it tells researchers about how these ancient cubs grew in comparison with their modern-day relatives, the lion (Panthera leo).

For instance, Uyan’s body, which was more intact than Dina’s, weighs about 6 lbs. (2.8 kilograms), which is about 4.6 lbs. (2.1 kg) heavier than a modern lion newborn, Potapova told Live Science. She added that because newborn lions don’t have any identifiable sex characteristics, it’s unclear whether Uyan and Dina were male or female.

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Uyan was also a furry cub, with fur about 1.2 inches long on its body, Potapova noted.

Dina and Uyan were so young, they likely couldn’t see yet, Potapova said. “Dina’s eyelids were tightly closed, while in Uyan, the left eye was closed, but the right eyelids were positioned a little apart,” Potapova wrote on the poster. However, it’s unclear whether Uyan’s right eyelids were already open when the animal died, or if they opened postmortem, Potapova said.

But modern lions don’t open their eyes for two to three weeks after birth, and they can’t even see properly for another week after that. So, given Uyan’s young age at time of death, it’s likely that the animal’s eyes were closed when it died, Potapova said.

Cave lion canines
In modern lion cubs, the milk (baby) teeth erupt when the cub is about 3 weeks old, and permanent canines replace them when the cub is about 3 months old. However, a computer tomography (CT) scan of Uyan and Dina showed that although the cubs were still toothless, the milk and canine teeth were already erupting below the gum line in both animals.

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