By Tim Binnall
A frozen ball of brown fur that was unearthed by a miner in Canada has been determined to be the mummified remains of a squirrel believed to be around 30,000 years old. The peculiar discovery was reportedly made back in 2018 by a worker at a site known as Hester Creek in a gold-rich region of the country's Yukon Territory. The curious clump seemingly went unnoticed until recently when the Yukon Beringia Interpretive Centre began preparations for a grand reopening this spring and, with plans to showcase the odd ball, experts took a closer look at it. "It's not quite recognizable," Yukon government paleontologist Grant Zazula said, "until you see these little hands and these claws, and you see a little tail, and then you see ears."
The specimen was subsequently brought to local veterinarian Dr. Jess Heath, who was enlisted to x-ray the ancient creature. Echoing Zazula's observation, she mused that "I'm really impressed that someone recognized it for what it was. From the outside, it just kind of looks like a brown blob. It looks a bit like a brown rock." The x-ray image of the fur ball (seen below) surprised the researchers as the creature was found to be a remarkably well-preserved arctic ground squirrel with its bone structure still intact. "We could see that it was in great condition and it was just curled up like it was sleeping," Heath marveled of the ancient animal that has been dubbed 'Hester' after the location where it was found.