Scientists while studying the remains of an Ice Age bird found that it is 46,000 years old.
According to media reports, the bird, which was trapped in frozen Siberian soil, was discovered in permafrost near a village of Belaya Gora in northeastern part of Siberia.
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It has been reported that the frozen bird was discovered by local fossil ivory hunters who passed it on to a team of experts, including Nicolas Dussex and Love Dalén from the Swedish Museum of Natural History for testing.
Radiocarbon dating reveals that the bird lived around 46,000 years ago.
According to a paper published on Friday in the journal Communications Biology, the bird has been identified as a horned lark (Eremophila alpestris) by the gangetic analysts.
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A media report quoted Love Dalén as saying that research showed the bird may be an ancestor to two subspecies of lark alive today, one in northern Russia and the other on the Mongolian steppe.
The report also quoted Love Dalén as saying: “This finding implies that the climatic changes that took place at the end of the last Ice Age led to formation of new subspecies.”
The report quoted Nicolas Dussex as saying that the bird’s preservation is explained in large part by the cold of the permafrost, but this specimen is in extraordinarily good condition.
The report quoted Dussex as saying: “The fact that such a small and fragile specimen was near intact also suggests that dirt/mud must have been deposited gradually, or at least that the ground was relatively stable so that the bird’s carcass was preserved in a state very close to its time of death.”