On the border of Sverdlovsk and Chelyabinsk Regions near Asha city, at the depth of 2.5 meters in a cave archeologists have found a tooth of an animal that lived at the area of excavation 120 thousand years ago.

This find has overthrown notions about the ancient fauna of the Ural Mountains, reports the head of the palaeoecology laboratory of the Plant and Animals Ecology Institute of the Ural branch of the Russian Academy of Sciences Pavel Kosintsev,.

“Until this find none of the scientists found facts confirming the existence of porcupines in the Urals. It was considered that these animals had lived in the ancient world much further to the south of the ridge of the Ural Mountains. However, our find proves the opposite. More than 100 thousand years ago the climate in the Urals was much warmer than scientists describe it. Here there were broad-leaved forests similar to those growing near Kiev. Not only wolves and bears lived in these woods, but also porcupines” – he said.

The tooth of a porcupine and other finds discovered in the cave will enable scientists to reconstruct more authentically the climate of the Ural Mountains, to understand how it was changing from millennium to millennium and what influenced its changes.

Sources: http://www.itar-tass.com