A team of international scientists have identified two stunning extinct Ice Age lion cubs, which they say are one of the best-preserved specimens ever found, from tens of thousands of years ago, according to US media reports. 

The scientists believe that the Siberian Sambas, nicknamed Boris and Sparta, briefly roamed the steppe of what is now eastern Russia tens of thousands of years ago. Boris and Sparta were found along the River Senyalyakh in the Yakutia region of Siberia, Russia.

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Cave lions, or panthera spelaea, once lived across much of Eurasia before going extinct around 10,000 years ago.

Siberia was not the barren land it is now during the last Ice Age. Cave lions, a somewhat larger cousin of today’s African lions, lived with mammoths, tundra wolves, bears, woolly rhinoceroses, bison, and saiga antelopes.

Although the two cave lion cubs were just a month or two old when they died — already the size of a full-grown house cat – carbon dating revealed that they were mummified at approximately the same time thousands of years apart, presumably in mud.

There is no clarity over how the two cubs might have died but computed tomography scans showed skull damage, dislocation of ribs, and other distortions in their skeletons, according to CNN inputs.

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While Boris, the less intact cub, is estimated to be around 43,448 years old, the more intact cub Sparta is 27,962 years old, according to the study published in the journal Quaternary.

These Ice Age big cats, though closely related, were larger than their African lion relatives that still exist today

Cave lions and early humans coexisted. Researchers say these lions are believed to have had less pronounced manes, and the difference in colour patterns between the juveniles and adults gave the researchers insight into how the animal’s fur pattern might have changed from youth to adulthood, according to an NBC report.