Wolf Pup Sisters from the Permafrost Reveal Ancient Ecology and Diet

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Frozen in time for more than 14,000 years, two small canid pups discovered in the Siberian permafrost are now helping scientists piece together how Ice Age predators lived, hunted, and survived. Once thought to be early domesticated dogs, the exceptionally preserved specimens found near the village of Tumat in 2011 and 2015 have been the subject of a new study, which has confirmed them as wild wolf sisters that lived during the Late Pleistocene. Remarkably, their stomachs still contained traces of their final meal, including meat from a juvenile woolly rhinoceros, and this has helped clarify aspects of Ice Age predator behaviour and diet

The study, led by Anne Kathrine Runge from the University of York and published in Quaternary Research, used ancient DNA sequencing, stable isotope profiling, bone measurements, plus microscopic analysis of gut contents to reconstruct the lives and deaths of the pups (Runge et al., 2025).

Life in the Late Pleistocene

The Pleistocene period lasted from roughly 2.6 million to 11,700 years ago. During this time, there were fluctuating ice ages, the spread of early humans, and the extinction of many large-bodied animals. Its final stage, the Late Pleistocene, was a period of significant ecological transition with species like the mammoth, cave lion, and woolly rhinoceros roaming vast grasslands known as the mammoth steppe. At the same time, modern humans expanded their range across Eurasia.

This is also the period when the earliest confirmed domesticated dogs began to appear in the archaeological record. When the two permafrost Tumat canines were found in 2011 and 2015, some researchers speculated that the pups were ‘pet’ dogs. This was because they were found near mammoth bones that had cut marks in them, leading to the idea that humans might have fed the pups scraps, so were possibly early domesticates.

Yet the latest evidence disputes that. Genetic analysis from Runge et al. (2025) shows the pups were not ancestral to dogs or modern wolves. They were sisters from an extinct wolf lineage. Their teeth and skeletal development suggest they were around two to three months old when they died.

Furthermore, there is no indication that humans fed them. The wolf pups’ stomach contents included meat from a woolly rhinoceros and traces of a small bird, possibly a wagtail. The rhino remains did not show signs of human processing, so the most plausible explanation is that adult wolves scavenged the carcass and regurgitated or delivered pieces to the puppies. It is also thought that the pups’ deaths were likely caused by a sudden ‘environmental event’, such as a den collapse or flooding, which then preserved their bodies in extraordinary detail. That is because permafrost provides cold and stable conditions, which helps to preserve soft tissues and stomach contents, typically lost in fossilisation. Specimens like the Tumat wolf pups allow researchers to examine the skeletal anatomy, kinship, diet, and developmental stage, and contribute to a growing understanding of predator ecology at a time of rapid climatic and ecological change. This latest research also highlights the importance of integrating multiple lines of evidence before interpreting proximity to human activity as being a sign of domestication.

Dog Origins

Over the years, there has been great debate about when humans domesticated dogs. Genetic evidence suggests domestication began sometime between 20,000 and 14,000 years ago; however, there is no single origin story. Bergström et al. (2020) undertook a large-scale ancient DNA study that found dogs across prehistoric Eurasia share ancestry with an extinct wolf population. Still, not all ancient wolves were involved in that process. The Tumat pups belonged to a different, now-extinct lineage. This supports the idea that domestication did not happen everywhere wolves and humans overlapped. Instead, it was a localised process that left many wild populations, like the Tumat wolves. In other words, they lived near humans but were not under their care or ‘kept’. So, this latest study helps us to better understand the Tumat wolf pups’ survival strategy, including early exposure to carcass feeding, and indicates some form of social structure within a wolf pack. Such details are essential to understanding the natural history of canids before they became our companions.

References

• Bergström, A., et al. (2020) Origins and genetic legacy of prehistoric dogs. Science, 370(6516), 557–564. https://doi.org/10.1126/science.aba9572
• Runge, A. K. W., et al. (2024) Multifaceted analysis reveals diet and kinship of Late Pleistocene Tumat puppies. Quaternary Research. https://doi.org/10.1017/qua.2024.10