YAKUTSK (Russia): Scientists discovered an astonishingly well-preserved cave lion cub in Siberia’s permafrost that lived 28,000 years ago, and may even still have traces of its mother’s milk in it.

The female cub, named Sparta, was found at the Semyuelyakh River in Russia’s Yakutia region in 2018 and a second lion cub called Boris was found the year before, said a study published in the journal “Quaternary”.

The cubs were found 15m apart but were from different litters and born thousands of years apart. Boris, a male cub, lived around 43,450 years ago, the study said.

The two cubs aged 1-2 months were found by mammoth-tusk collectors. Two other lion cubs named Uyan and Dina have also been found in the region in recent years.

Cave lions have been extinct for thousands of years.

Valery Plotnikov, one of the study’s authors, said Sparta was so well preserved that it still had its fur, internal organs and skeleton.

“The find itself is unique,” he said. “We hope some disintegrated parts of the mother’s milk remain intact. Because if we have that, we can understand what its mother’s diet was.”

Similar finds in Russia’s vast Siberian region have been reported with increasing regularity. Climate change is warming the Arctic at a faster pace than the rest of the world and has thawed the ground in some areas long locked in permafrost.