35,000-year-old saber-toothed baby cat mummy still has its fur

By Ashley Strickland, CNN

(CNN) — Woolly mammoths, giant sloths and saber-toothed cats were a fact of life for early humans.

But today’s researchers can only hope to find fossils that will shed more light on the existence of these fascinating prehistoric mega-creatures — and why they went extinct.

New clues found in Earth’s northernmost regions are helping piece together portraits of these animals like never before as ice age remains surface from thawing permafrost.

Fantastic creatures

Paleontologists excavating in Russia’s Yakutia region uncovered the first known mummy of a saber-toothed cat. The cub was only about 3 weeks old when it died around 35,000 years ago.

The well-preserved remains, uncovered in Siberian permafrost, are nearly intact, including surprisingly soft fur and even the “toe beans” — as cat lovers call feline footpads — on its front paws.

It’s the first evidence from Asia of Homotherium latidens, and the specimen’s genetic information will help researchers better understand how the species lived and hunted.

When compared with modern lion cubs, the baby cat mummy’s anatomy revealed striking differences, including darker fur, smaller ears and peculiar adaptations to accommodate massive incisors it never had a chance to grow.

Ocean secrets

The search for Amelia Earhart’s missing Lockheed 10-E Electra plane in the Pacific Ocean continues after promising sonar imagery released in January turned out to be a plane-shaped pile of rocks.

The anomaly was initially spotted on the seafloor about 100 miles (161 kilometers) from Howland Island, where Earhart was expected to land more than 87 years ago.

But a return visit to the site in early November showed the object was a natural rock formation, rather than a sunken plane.

“Talk about the cruelest formation ever created by nature,” said Tony Romeo, CEO of exploration company Deep Sea Vision. “It’s almost like somebody did set those rocks out in this nice little pattern of her plane, just to mess with somebody out there looking for her.”

Across the universe

Astronomers have captured an unprecedented image of a star beyond our galaxy, and the striking observations reveal what may be its final death throes.

The red supergiant star, called WOH G64, is about 160,000 light-years from Earth in the Large Magellanic Cloud, which orbits the Milky Way. The close-up image shows an egg-shaped cocoon of dust and gas encircling the star, as well as an outer doughnut-shaped ring of dust.

Red supergiant stars shed outer layers before they explode. “If this is what we are seeing (WOH G64) doing, then a spectacle awaits us soon,” said Jacco van Loon, Keele Observatory director at the UK’s Keele University.

And some astronomers think the explosion will be visible from Earth when it occurs.

Other worlds

Earth may have sported a rocky ring — similar to Saturn’s — about 466 million years ago, according to new research.

At the time, our planet experienced numerous strikes from meteorites, many within 30 degrees of the equator, which has led some scientists to believe they were hitting the planet after raining down from a potential ring.

The hypothesis may also help researchers deduce why Earth experienced one of its chilliest global deep freezes, which could have been caused by the shadow cast from the ring.

Separately, Kelly and Zach Weinersmith, authors of the recent book “A City on Mars,” suggest that numerous challenges, including reproduction, will doom SpaceX CEO Elon Musk’s intention to settle the red planet within the next 30 years.

Trailblazers

Thousands of scientists have analyzed more than 100 million cells from over 10,000 people to make a gargantuan leap forward in understanding the human body.

It’s part of an ambitious endeavor to create an atlas of every single kind of cell we possess — which is quite a feat considering each human has more than 37 trillion cells.

The research teams uncovered information about an organ that influences immune system functions, mapped all the cells of the gut, and produced a blueprint of how skeletons form in utero.

“The challenge we’ve had is that we didn’t know the cells well enough to understand how variants and mutations in our genes are really affecting disease. Once we have this map, we’re able to better find the causes of disease,” said Aviv Regev, founding co-chair of the Human Cell Atlas.

Explorations

Traveling this weekend? These intriguing reads will help fill the time:

— SpaceX aborted a highly anticipated catch attempt of its rocket booster after launching the sixth test flight of Starship, mere weeks after acing the feat the first time. But the spacecraft still achieved new milestones on its latest brief journey.

— A well-preserved knife handle in the shape of a gladiator was unearthed at Hadrian’s Wall in northeast England, and the rare artifact sheds light on the celebrity status of the ancient Roman combatants.

— The Solar Orbiter mission captured new images showcasing bursts of solar activity and the highest-resolution views of the sun’s visible surface ever seen.

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