Preserved in a similarly “cool” way like the famous Ötzi: Experts have recovered the mummy of a chamois from an alpine glacier. According to the scientists, the animal, which has been preserved for over 400 years, can now serve as a model for developing optimal preservation measures and analysis techniques for dealing with human ice mummies. In the course of global warming, these particularly revealing witnesses to human history could now appear more and more frequently from the ice in different parts of the world.
The glacier man Ötzi is the most famous example: investigations of the body features, additional finds and the genetic material of the man, who was preserved in the ice of the Alps about 5300 years ago, have provided unique insights into the late Neolithic Europe. Another prominent find was later successful in the Andes: There experts were able to recover “Juanita” – the almost completely frozen mummy of an Inca girl, which was probably sacrificed about 600 years ago. The newly discovered animal mummy now shows a similar conservation status as these two prominent human mummies, report the experts at the Eurac Research research center in Bolzano.
An “Özi chamois” travels by helicopter
The mountain hiker Hermann Oberlechner found it in the 3200 meter high glacier area of the Ahrntal in South Tyrol. As he reports, due to the special nature of the animal’s skin, he had realized that it could not be ordinary, recently dead fallen game. “Half the animal looked out of the snow. The skin was like leather everywhere, without hair. I’ve never seen that before. I immediately took a picture and sent it to the responsible game warden. We then informed the Department for Monument Preservation, ”reports Oberlechner. As a result, the mummy experts from Eurac Research appeared on the scene and a decision was made to rescue it: The chamois was finally flown from its icy resting place by helicopter to Bolzano and brought to the laboratory for conservation technology at Eurac Research.
The previous studies have shown that the glacier in the Ahrntal has preserved the chamois for more than 400 years. As the ice melted, it was now apparently partially exposed. As the mummy researchers explain, their particular interest in the animal mummy is due to its potential as a model: it can now provide important insights for the conservation and study of glacier mummies around the world. In addition to physical and chemical conditions, the focus is primarily on the further development of techniques to research fossil DNA with as little loss as possible, say the scientists. It is the first time that an animal mummy has been used for such studies, ”says Albert Zink from the Eurac Research Institute for Mummy Research.
Animal model for the mummy experts
As he and his colleagues explain, the DNA from mummy samples is often damaged and only present in very small quantities. In the case of a new find, the most important question for the experts is how best to examine and preserve the mummy without destroying the fossil DNA. Because every intervention can have irreversible consequences. Experimenting with new techniques is extremely difficult with human mummies. An animal mummy, on the other hand, is ideal for this – especially if it has been exposed to almost the same conditions as human glacier mummies – for example Ötzi or Juanita.
“In the laboratory, we first create the optimal preservation conditions for the newly found chamois so that we can concentrate on the DNA. With in-depth analyzes, we then examine how various preservation conditions affect the DNA, ”explains Marco Samadelli, from Eurac Research. His colleague Zink has great expectations for the project: “Our aim is to use the scientific data to develop a conservation protocol that can apply to glacier mummies worldwide,” the expert concludes.
Source: Eurac Research