Liquid Blood And Urine Discovered Inside Ancient 42,000-Year-Old Foal

Scientists from Russia have discovered liquid blood and urine inside the frozen carcass of a foal lived 42,000 years ago in Siberia's Verkhoyansk region.
The researchers extracted the body fluids from the animal during an autopsy and examined in the expectation of cloning the extinct species, claimed Semyon Grigoriev, director of the Mammoth Museum at Northeastern Federal University (NEFU) in Yakutsk.

Source: CNN

The prehistoric foal, fixed in the permafrost of the colossal Batagaika crater, was found by mammoth tusk hunters in 2018. Grigoriev said that the creature seemed to have been just 2 weeks old when it died, possibly from drowning in mud which later became part of the permafrost.
“An autopsy showed the foal carcass was extremely well-preserved, the body even without deformation,” he added. “The hair cover also preserved most parts of the carcass, especially at the head and legs.

Source: CNN

Grigoriev also claimed that it’s unusual of animal’s fur to be well-preserved like this case, before continuing, “Now we can say what color was the wool of the extinct horses of the Pleistocene era.”
But there is one thing more unusual: the find of liquid blood and urine. Grigoriev said he was aware of only one other case where experts discovered liquid blood inside an animal from the Pleistocene epoch, lasting from about 2.6 million years ago to nearly 11,700 years ago.

Source: CNN

The liquid blood was from the frozen carcass of an adult mammoth found by the team led by Grigoriev back in 2013, at Little Lyakhovsky Island off the northeast coast of Russia.
“As a rule, the blood coagulates or even turns to powder in the ancient remains of animals of the ice age, even if the carcass is preserved seems to be well,” Grigoriev explained.

Source: CNN

“This is due to mummification when moisture and other biological fluids gradually evaporate over thousands of years, even if the remains are in the permafrost. The remains are preserved best if they are in the ice, as it was with our mammoth,” he continued.
Grigoriev said NEFU specialists were working with experts from the controversial South Korean Sooam Biotech Research Foundation in an attempt to cultivate the foal's cells for cloning, though he was not quite positive about their chances.

Source: CNN

Sooam is led by scientist Hwang Woo-suk, who claimed in 2004 that he had successfully cloned human embryonic stem cells before admitting he had faked his findings.
"I think that even the unique preservation [of] blood is absolutely hopeless for cloning purposes since the main blood cells -- the red blood cells or erythrocytes -- do not have nuclei with DNA," Grigoriev said. "We [are] trying to find intact cells in muscle tissue and internal organs that are also very well-preserved."