But X-ray scans have revealed that this grapefruit-sized lump is a 30,000-year-old mummified ground squirrel from the ice age.
A gold miner found the mysterious fur ball in 2018 in the Klondike gold fields near Dawson City, Yukon, according to the Yukon Beringia Interpretive Centre.
“It’s not quite recognizable until you see these little hands and these claws, and you see a little tail, and then you see ears,” Grant Zazula, a Yukon government paleontologist, told CBC in March.
He took it to Jess Heath, a veterinarian, for further investigation. Heath conducted X-ray scans that revealed that the frozen hair ball was a young, curled-up Arctic ground squirrel. It likely died in hibernation, possibly during its first year.
“We could see that it was in great condition and it was just curled up like it was sleeping,” Heath told CBC.
“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,” she said.
The Klondike gold fields of the Yukon have been covered in permafrost — frozen soil — since the ice age. That makes the area perfect for preserving creatures that died back then — hair, nails, and all.
Gold miners there have previously found a mummified wolf pup and an immaculately preserved baby mammoth.
Discoveries like these are likely to become more common as global temperatures continue to rise due to human emissions of heat-trapping gases like carbon dioxide and methane. That’s causing the permafrost to thaw, revealing everything from mummified creatures to viruses and anthrax deposits.
A ground squirrel for the ages
An illustration of the mummified ground squirrel curled up in its burrow during hibernation. Government of Yukon / Artist Julius Csotonyi
This squirrel was discovered within the Traditional Territory of the Tr’ondëk Hwëch’in people.
It’s the same species of Arctic ground squirrel that still lives throughout the Yukon today, though they look more like groundhogs than tree squirrels.
Arctic ground squirrels make nests underground for their hibernation. Many of these nests have been preserved since the ice age, and they’re common in the Yukon — but finding a preserved squirrel like this is rare.
“I study bones all the time and they’re exciting, they’re really neat. But when you see an animal that’s perfectly preserved, that’s 30,000 years old, and you can see its face and its skin and its hair and all that, it’s just so visceral. It brings it so to life,” Zazula said.
“Some people get really, really excited when they find that giant woolly mammoth leg or, you know, the big tusks or the big skulls. But for me, the Arctic ground squirrel fossils, the nests, and now this mummified squirrel, are really the coolest things that we do have. They’re my favorites, for sure,” he told CBC.
The Yukon Beringia Interpretive Centre posted photos of the mummy and its X-ray on Facebook, announcing that it would put the specimen on display.
