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10,000-Year-Old Extinct Species Found Hidden in Siberian Cave

By Deepthi Balasunder | Update Date: Oct 29, 2015 03:37 PM EDT

An amazing discovery from an ancient era has been made yet again in Siberia. According to the Academy of Sciences of Yakutia, two cave lion cubs have been discovered wholly intact in the Sakha Republic of Siberia. These ancient predators were found in a cave and thankfully have been almost totally preserved by permafrost. The cave lions are one of the world's ancient predators and have been extinct long since. The ones found in the cave could we well around 10,000 years old, reported The Siberian Times.

The Academy of Sciences of Yakutia due time are planning to highlight their Pleistocene-era to the media in the month of November this year. The varied finds include the cave lions, a woolly rhinoceros and a woolly mammoth, reports Newser.

The cave lions (Panthera spelaea) apparently roamed alongside the famed wooly mammoths of yester centuries, and are quite closely related to the Afro-Asiatic lions alive today. The cave lions however were huge in size with a shoulder height of nearly four feet, and as predators they predominantly preyed on horses, reindeer, and possibly little mammoths, the IFL Science reports.

This finding of the well-preserved cave lions in the caves of Siberia is the best discovery of this species. Up until now, only bits and pieces of bones, teeth and carcass of the cave lions have been chanced upon. The reason behind this particular species going extinct is still not known per se, but possibly climatic changes and humans beginning to hunt where the reasons behind their annihilation, reports Newser.

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