Original subtitles

♪♪

narrator: A mind-boggling wreck

at the bottom of a frozen lake in the rocky mountains.

I've never seen anything like this before.

It's part building, part machine.

It defies explanation.

Sounds like science fiction,

but it's 100% true.

An ancient mummy with strange tattoos

is unearthed from the siberian permafrost.

They warned that disturbing

the mummy's frozen tomb

would trigger an ancient curse,

causing bad luck, illness, even death.

♪♪

the discovery of the frozen body

of a 5,300-year-old stone age man

launches the oldest murder investigation in history.

Rose: And this wasn't just a murder.

This was a brutal killing.

It's clear that something

pretty dramatic went down.

♪♪

these are the strangest mysteries,

trapped in the coldest places.

Lost relics,

forgotten treasures,

dark secrets,

locked in their icy tombs for ages.

But now as ice melts around the world,

their stories will finally be exposed.

-- Captions by vitac -- www.Vitac.Com

captions paid for by discovery communications

[ wind whistling ]

♪♪

high in the altai mountains of siberia,

on the borders of russia, mongolia, and china,

lies the ukok plateau.

♪♪

you get the sense that no one has set foot here

for thousands of years.

There's just nothing here.

But if you look carefully, you see these large mounds

rising up out of the grassland.

♪♪

what are they?

♪♪

when you look closer, you realize

they're actually made of rocks piled on top of one another.

♪♪

it makes you wonder, "what's underneath?"

narrator: Beneath one of these mounds,

a team of russian archeologists will make a discovery so unique

that it will capture the world's imagination for decades to come.

♪♪

it was a near perfectly preserved corpse of a woman,

buried by herself in a tomb,

along with all manner of fine clothing and riches.

♪♪

it turns out they'd stumbled across one

of the only tombs left intact

after centuries of being plundered.

The gold, jewelry, and secret artifacts

are all in perfect condition.

♪♪

but who on earth was this woman

and was there a mysterious reason

this tomb was spared from looting?

♪♪

narrator: It's immediately apparent to archeologists

that this woman held a significant place

in her society.

And it's not just the treasure that tells them so.

It's the fact that she's buried alone.

♪♪

until they know more,

archeologists call her the ice maiden.

♪♪

the ice maiden was a member of the scythian pazyryk culture,

iron age nomads who roamed these lands

between the 6th and 2nd centuries bce.

The pazyryk were horse people

who traveled to the ukok plateau in the winter

to graze their cattle,

which they raised for food and clothes.

They traded goods with the merchants of china,

india, and persia,

and knew how to defend themselves.

O'keefe: You didn't want to mess with these folks.

Think the dothraki from "game of thrones."

horses, beards, tattoos, muscles -- same deal.

♪♪

billson: The pazyryk were truly nomadic, living and dying on the move.

They buried their dead in groups

by constructing burial sites called kurgans.

♪♪

they had to wait until summer to bury their dead,

when the permafrost warmed up just enough

to dig 10 feet down into the earth.

♪♪

narrator: Women were always buried

with their husbands, never alone.

So why does this ice maiden have a whole kurgan all to herself?

What makes her so special?

♪♪

narrator: Archeologists examine the tomb,

looking for clues to her identity.

Behind the northern wall of the ice maiden's burial vault,

they discover the skeletons of six horses,

fully bridled and saddled,

laden with ornate wooden ornaments pressed in gold foil.

Whoever owned these horses cared for them greatly

and treated them with the utmost reverence.

Narrator: But it's not only the gold and riches

that capture the researchers' attention.

There's something odd about the way the horses are arranged.

It appears that the horses were bound before they were buried.

♪♪

and, if you look at their skulls,

they all have these similar-shaped holes in them.

Just about the size of the sharp end of a pickax,

narrator: All of it indicates that these horses were sacrificed,

perhaps to accompany the ice maiden into the afterlife.

O'keefe: Were these her horses?

Could she have been a warrior?

Narrator: Exploring this theory,

researchers turn to the mummy itself,

peeking out from beneath one of her shirtsleeves is a tattoo.

When they pulled the clothing back to reveal it fully,

these are just the most beautiful,

elaborate tattoos of fantastical beasts,

running up the length of each arm.

♪♪

the pazyryk are known for having some

of the most sophisticated

and intricate tattoo art in history.

It's amazing how modern these tattoos look,

both in terms of design and execution.

They could've been inked last week

and you wouldn't know any different.

Narrator: But these weren't just beautiful.

They had a purpose.

Billson: Tattoos, for the pazyryk people,

were like an I.D., or a passport to the afterlife.

They believed it was the only way that family members

would recognize them in the spiritual realm.

Narrator: Could the ice maiden's tattoos be a code to her identity?

The animal imagery is out of this world.

Real animals, mythical animals,

upside-down animals, inside-out animals.

Narrator: On the ice maiden's left shoulder

is a deer with a griffin's beak and capricorn's antlers,

both symbols of courage and boldness.

The mouth of a spotted panther with a long tail

is seen at the legs of a sheep.

Now, this is the interesting part.

These annual patterns mirror the tattoos found

on the body of a pazyryk warrior chief

dug from the ice earlier this century.

♪♪

even more interesting is that the warrior chief himself

was also buried with horses, just like the ice maiden.

That's most likely not a coincidence.

She's wearing thigh-high, felt riding boots

and a wooden breastplate

that looks suspiciously like it could be armor.

Narrator: All of it seems to support the warrior theory,

all except one glaring omission.

O'keefe: She wasn't found with a single weapon.

No ax, no sword.

The pazyryk warriors lived and died by their weapons.

Surely, if she was a warrior,

she would've been buried with one.

Narrator: So, if she wasn't a warrior,

who was she?

Bellinger: Beside her head is a dish of coriander seeds,

herbs, and roots.

And cannabis.

♪♪

narrator: Historically, herbs and roots have been associated,

throughout many traditions, with healing practices.

Was the ice maiden some kind of spiritual healer?

♪♪

what better way to communicate with the spiritual world

than with the assistance

of a pinch of medical-grade cannabis?

♪♪

bellinger: My guess?

She was a shaman,

a high priestess whose visions provided a direct channel

to the gods and ancestral spirits of the pazyryk people.

Narrator: It's a valid theory, but they can't be sure.

Archeologists decide to transport her body

to the lab, to find out more.

But when the local altai mountain people hear

about their plan, they protest.

They believe she shouldn't be moved at all.

They warned that disturbing the mummy's frozen tomb

would trigger an ancient curse,

causing bad luck, illness, even death.

Narrator: Researchers dismiss the warnings

as harmless superstition.

But, before the helicopter carrying her body tries

to take off the mountain, something goes terribly wrong.

Did they unwittingly awaken the curse of the ice maiden?

♪♪

♪♪

narrator: The helicopter carrying a 2,500-year-old frozen mummy

known as the ice maiden

nearly crashes during the excavation process

and has to make an emergency landing.

The accident confirms

the altai mountain people's worst fears.

The locals cautioned the archeologists

that disturbing her body

would unleash the fury of her ancient spirit.

♪♪

in a case of real life imitating myth,

bad things did start to happen.

Shortly after she was removed,

there was a series of 300 earth tremors,

which is highly unusual for this region.

♪♪

narrator: That was just the beginning.

They had hailstorms raining down

balls of ice the size of goose eggs.

♪♪

there were forest fires

and an inexplicable rash of suicides.

The timing of all of this was eerily coincidental.

Narrator: Archeologists were undeterred.

They believed the mummy's body held secrets

that only science could reveal.

They performed a series of tests

to try to uncover her true identity.

Radiocarbon dating showed that she was

between 25 and 28 years old when she died,

but that, in itself, isn't significant

because the lifespan of a woman from the iron age

would've been around 30 years old, anyway.

X-rays show that she had suffered

some broken bones prior to her death,

the kind that, say, would happen

by falling off a horse.

But it wasn't anything too serious.

♪♪

bellinger: It was curious.

Her skull was intact

and there were no marks on her body

to indicate that she suffered any sort of fatal injury,

but the state of her soft tissue suggested

that she had been severely emaciated.

Had she been ill?

♪♪

it wasn't until scientists gave the ice maiden an mri

that the answer started to take shape.

Narrator: Magnetic resonance imaging results

revealed a shocking piece of the puzzle.

They found a tumor in her right breast.

♪♪

rose: It appears she had breast cancer.

♪♪

and it very likely killed her,

after spreading to multiple organs

over a number of excruciating months.

Given her obvious high rank in society,

there's no other reason she would've been so emaciated.

Only cancer would've had that impact.

♪♪

cannabis use was widespread throughout pazyryk culture,

so, rather than signifying her role as a shaman,

perhaps this woman was simply using the cannabis

as a painkiller.

♪♪

rose: In the museum, they were able to take a closer look

at what she was wearing.

They discovered that her long-sleeved golden shirt

was made of silk, which, back then,

was more prized than gold.

♪♪

she was definitely a woman of means.

She had gold earrings, as well as a pouch

that contained a small mirror,

meticulously decorated with blue beads.

Narrator: Laying beside her in the tomb

were two wooden tables,

decked out with meat and drink --

a feast fit for royalty.

Only the most powerful women in this society

could afford items like these,

like the wives or daughters of chiefs.

In other words, she was probably a princess.

♪♪

the locals have been calling the mummy the altai ice princess

from the moment she was discovered.

It's possible they've known exactly who this mummy was,

right from the very beginning.

♪♪

♪♪

narrator: At the bottom of an icy lake in jasper, alberta,

lies a mystery that may unlock a top secret world war ii plan.

This is the last thing you'd expect to see

at the bottom of a lake.

♪♪

somara: I've never seen anything like this before.

It's part building, part machine.

It defies explanation.

♪♪

narrator: Sitting on the bottom of the lake,

under 130 feet of icy water,

lies a strange series of tangled, rusting pipes

and wooden boards.

It's not a boat or a plane, or any vehicle I've seen.

Maybe it's some kind of a machine.

Could the pipes be part of a steam engine?

♪♪

there's no furnace to generate steam,

no gears to run, no wheels.

It's definitely not a steam engine.

♪♪

if it was a water pumping station,

it should be on the shore, not in the water,

and there's no place to pump water to.

♪♪

narrator: What is this wreckage

and how did it get to the bottom of a lake

in the middle of the rocky mountains?

♪♪

and why are so many history buffs exposing themselves

to freezing waters, just to get a glimpse of it?

♪♪

if you add up all the components,

it appears that, originally,

this structure was about 60 feet in length

and about 30 feet wide,

which is about the size of an average houseboat.

♪♪

somara: The pipes, they're unique.

If we could figure out what was being transported

through the pipes and where it was going,

it might help us figure this out.

♪♪

narrator: Judging from the design of the pipes,

it looks like it could be part

of an elaborate refrigeration system

that runs through the heart of the structure.

♪♪

somara: That's interesting.

It looks like the pipes are there to carry

some sort of fluid or air around the building,

which would've removed the heat and kept it cool.

♪♪

irving: You have the same kind of thing in your fridge,

but this is on a much larger scale.

It's more like the kinda thing you'd expect to see

in a giant commercial cooling facility.

♪♪

o'keefe: There are no shelves, no racks, no place to put anything.

You wouldn't just pile things on the floor

in the middle of a giant wooden frame to keep them cold.

Narrator: What is an intricate refrigeration system doing

inside a 60-foot wooden structure

in the middle of a frozen lake?

Some believe the answer lies in one of the strangest,

and most ambitious, ideas of world war ii.

♪♪

narrator: A mind-boggling wreckage at the bottom of a lake

deep in the rocky mountains defies explanation.

♪♪

the entire building was one big refrigerator.

Now, that, in itself, is strange,

but why is it at the bottom of a lake?

And, even before it got there,

what was it trying to keep frozen?

♪♪

narrator: The answer may lie thousands of miles away,

in winston churchill's

top secret documents from world war ii.

♪♪

britain's ability to win the war against the germans

depended on tons of supplies sent across the atlantic

in ships manned by civilians,

but there weren't enough warships to protect them all

and allied ships were being sunk faster

than they could be replaced.

The aircraft, at the time, didn't have sufficient range

to provide air cover for the allied ships,

leaving them at the mercy of the germans.

Narrator: More than 650,000 tons of supplies were sunk

in June of 1942, alone. [ explosion ]

the allies were desperate for a solution, any solution.

♪♪

enter geoffrey nathaniel pyke.

♪♪

irving: Pyke was this wonderfully eccentric inventor.

He was working with the british war office

when he came up with this wild idea.

Basically, what he wanted to do was drag

a giant piece of ice from the arctic

to the middle of the atlantic ocean

and use it to land planes on.

♪♪

narrator: Pyke called the project habakkuk,

a hebrew name, meaning "he that embraces."

that is an outlandish plan,

but the british were willing to try anything.

So, on December 4, 1942,

winston churchill signed the most secret memo,

approving project habakkuk,

to make secret aircraft carriers

out of icebergs.

♪♪

sounds like science fiction, but it's 100% true.

Narrator: As crazy as it sounds, the project had many benefits.

Building materials, like steel,

were in short supply during the war.

Ice was cheap and plentiful and, at the time,

icebergs were thought to be indestructible.

After the titanic sunk in 1912,

the international ice patrol was formed,

to remove the threat to ships.

But the patrol quickly found

that they couldn't actually destroy any icebergs.

They tried guns, bombs, even torpedoes.

So what better ship to take on new boats

than an immense iceberg, immune to torpedoes?

♪♪

somara: They even came up with a new substance

to make the icebergs even stronger --

a mix of wood chips and ice,

which they called pykrete, after geoffrey pyke.

They thought it would be so durable

that it might absorb a torpedo blast,

making the ice warship utterly invincible.

♪♪

narrator: But ice does have one weakness they knew they had to overcome.

While it might be invincible,

when it comes to bombs or torpedoes,

it was completely vulnerable to warm weather.

♪♪

so how do you keep an iceberg from melting

in the warm southern waters?

A giant refrigeration system.

♪♪

narrator: To test the design, and whether or not

it was possible to keep ice constantly cold,

scientists and engineers began constructing

a scaled-down prototype on the frozen surface

of lake patricia, in jasper.

The lake in alberta was close to a railway,

where they could move supplies to the project.

♪♪

it was also near a large camp of mennonite and doukhobors,

who were sitting out the war as conscientious objectors.

These men supplied the labor for the construction.

♪♪

irving: The lake was also remote enough to keep the project top secret.

'cause if you're gonna build a giant, secret ice warship,

you wanna keep it away from the eyes of the germans.

♪♪

narrator: The full design was 2,000 feet long.

It had multiple buildings on the surface of the ice,

crew quarters and hangars

dug out in the center of the iceberg.

♪♪

somara: 2,000 feet is more than twice as long as the titanic,

and the vessel would've weighed over two million tons.

It would've had space for over 300 planes

and the vessel could withstand waves of over 50 feet high.

♪♪

their design is completely nuts

and it's also completely amazing.

So, why didn't they use these ice ships in the war?

♪♪

♪♪

narrator: The prototype of a world war ii

aircraft carrier made entirely of ice

never made it out of development.

The hms habakkuk stayed afloat and frozen

through the summer of 1943,

but was abandoned in the fall,

when churchill called an end to the project.

♪♪

the allies began using iceland, and portugal,

as bases to refuel their planes,

which negated the need for floating aerodromes.

♪♪

somara: Newer planes, that could patrol for longer, were introduced,

and more accurate radar helped track u-boats.

The war was starting to turn in favor of the allies.

♪♪

o'keefe: They just didn't need the ice warships.

Too bad.

Would've been epic.

Narrator: The fantastical aircraft carrier made of ice

never became a reality.

But the fact that it was developed at all

is a testament to the power of a great idea,

no matter how impractical it may seem at the time.

The wreckage continues to draw divers from across the planet,

eager to explore one of the most bizarre

secret military projects ever.

♪♪

10,000 feet above sea level,

in the iconic italian alps,

an ancient murder mystery lies waiting to be discovered.

You're thousands of feet up from a picturesque valley

with a stunning view of the mountains

and there, in the ice,

is something that's totally out of place.

♪♪

it's pretty shocking to come across something like that

because it's entirely not what you're expecting to see.

♪♪

narrator: When two alpine hikers stumble across a body in the ice,

they assume it's an unfortunate mountaineer.

♪♪

but a closer look reveals

that what they found was far stranger,

and far older.

♪♪

the body turns out to be a 5,300-year-old mummy

lying face-down over a rock

and preserved perfectly for all that time.

♪♪

they call the body otzi the iceman,

after the otztal alps, where the body was found.

His hair, organs, and skin are almost entirely intact.

♪♪

incredibly, through the examination,

it was discovered that otzi had been shot

in the back by an arrow,

which means, surprisingly,

otzi was murdered.

♪♪

rose: And this wasn't just a murder.

This was a brutal killing.

It's clear that something pretty dramatic went down here.

♪♪

narrator: This archeological find just turned

into the oldest murder investigation in the world.

♪♪

otzi lived at the end of the stone age,

a time before countries, before kings,

where most people survived by hunting and gathering.

But this was a turning point in human civilization.

People were just starting to farm.

But, as populations grew, so did competition

for this land and the resources on it.

Some were willing to kill for it.

Who, then, may have wanted this man dead?

When scientists examine the arrow wound,

they find the flint arrowhead

still lodged deep in his left shoulder.

♪♪

irving: The arrow injury was the cause of death.

It punctured an artery, caused massive bleeding,

and ultimately proved fatal,

narrator: Given how deep the flint arrowhead was lodged,

they determined that he was attacked from a distance.

He was shot from over 100 feet away.

The archer would've been highly proficient

with a bow, to make that shot.

Narrator: Now, they know how he died,

but not who killed him,

and why.

♪♪

they turn to the ancient crime scene, looking for clues.

Otzi is still wearing one of his shoes,

made of grass and skin.

He's carrying a bow

with a quill full of broken arrows,

and he has a backpack full of tools.

♪♪

irving: His clothes were leather, and extremely well-made.

Plus, his shoes were designed for walking on the snow.

♪♪

clarke: For his era, this was top-of-the-line survival gear.

These would've been desirable items

essential for mountain survival.

♪♪

rose: He also carried flint weapons and a copper ax.

Otzi would've been one of the best-equipped for his time.

A tool kit like that means he had prestige and status.

♪♪

o'keefe: Copper tools were extremely rare.

Most people of this era were still using stone tools,

so a copper ax would've been considered priceless.

Bellinger: Looking at the evidence, you have to wonder

if robbery was a motive for this murder.

Were this guy's possessions

worth enough to somebody to kill him?

♪♪

irving: There's one big problem with robbery

as a motive for otzi's murder.

If they wanted his stuff, they could've just taken it.

♪♪

bellinger: Who would kill someone for their possessions,

but then leave them all behind?

Particularly that copper ax,

which would've been incredibly valuable at the time.

Narrator: So, if it wasn't theft,

what was the motive for this murder?

♪♪

perhaps his killer came from a rival tribe,

or, maybe, he had an enemy within his own tribe.

♪♪

as researchers examine the body further,

they discover the arrow wound is not his only injury.

Rose: Otzi also had a very grievous wound on his right hand,

a cut between a thumb and the forefinger.

Billson: The injuries appear to be defensive wounds,

so maybe he fought off his attacker

before fleeing and getting shot in the back.

♪♪

when scientists investigated the wounds to otzi's right hand,

they discovered that the injuries showed

signs of healing.

This would imply that the injury was somewhere

around 24 to 48 hours old.

Narrator: When they analyze the broken arrows,

they find the blood of two other people on them.

This leads them to think that he must've killed those people,

otherwise, he wouldn't have been able to retrieve his arrows.

♪♪

all told, it's clear that otzi was involved

in multiple attacks or fights.

This wasn't a one-off ambush.

♪♪

clarke: Considering the nature of his injuries,

one has to wonder what was going on here.

Was this an ongoing battle?

Was this a singular conflict?

Like what kind of trouble was otzi in?

♪♪

♪♪

narrator: The discovery of a 5,300-year-old mummy

high up in the italian alps,

with an arrowhead lodged in his back,

launches an ancient murder investigation.

Who killed otzi, and why?

♪♪

after finding additional defensive wounds on his hand,

which appear to be

from an entirely different incident,

researchers wonder if otzi was simply having a very bad day

or if there was something more sinister going on.

The key question here is,

was this a series of unrelated violent encounters

and pure coincidence,

or was it a two-day-long sequence of violence

that led to his murder?

♪♪

if we can piece together his movements over his final days,

it might shed light on what led to his death.

Narrator: How do you figure out

where someone was over 5,000 years ago?

Irving: Otzi is a wet mummy,

that means all the internal organs and body fat

were well-preserved.

Wet mummies are much more rare to find

and can offer scientists much more information

than dry mummies.

Narrator: Scientists autopsy otzi's body

and make an intriguing discovery.

Otzi is so well-preserved

that he still has food in his system.

It's a very rare thing to see in anything this old.

The speed of human digestion

hasn't changed much in 5,000 years,

so, if we look at how far along the food was in his system,

from stomach to colon,

we can tell approximately when he ate it.

♪♪

the oldest food in his system was 33 hours old,

so we're able to see everything he consumed since then.

♪♪

not only can we determine when otzi ate,

but pollen analysis tells us where he ate as well.

♪♪

irving: When otzi ate his meals,

he consumed pollen at the same time as his food.

We find different kinds of pollen

at different altitudes within the mountains.

So, by analyzing the pollen, we can estimate approximately

how high up he was when he ate those meals.

♪♪

narrator: Trees in this area release their pollen

at various elevations,

the hornbeam releases it at lower elevations.

Conifers? Much higher up the mountain.

The background pollen, mixed in with the food that otzi ate

about 33 hours before his death came from pine and spruce,

which only grow in the alpine and subalpine regions.

This suggests that otzi was near 8,000 feet in elevation

when he had that first meal.

♪♪

o'keefe: From this, we can learn that he was at a high elevation

when he consumed that meal 33 three hours before his death.

We can tell that otzi's first violent encounter

occurred around this time,

based on the extent of healing on his hand wound.

Narrator: The next layer of pollen they find is hornbeam,

which tells them that, shortly after he ate this meal,

otzi rapidly descended

from the mountain peak to the valley.

But was he running from the fight where he was injured

or was he chasing someone to finish them off?

♪♪

irving: The valley floor would've had very rough terrain

and lots of good places to hide,

so a great place for a game of cat and mouse.

Was he the cat or was he the mouse?

♪♪

o'keefe: So he's down at the bottom of the valley,

nine to 12 hours prior to his death,

but his body was found back up to 10,000 feet nine hours later.

To climb 10,000 feet over the course of a full day

is a huge undertaking.

And to think that he did that

after already having come down 8,000 feet.

He must've been an incredible athlete.

And, not only that, but very, very motivated.

♪♪

narrator: But without any witnesses,

researchers still can't answer these questions.

All they can do is speculate.

We can tell a lot about his last 33 hours,

but we still don't know if he was the hunter or the hunted

and we don't know if he was killed by an enemy

or by somebody from his own tribe.

♪♪

what we do know is that he fought

and injured several people before he died,

he was moving fast and erratically,

with his weapons in need of repair

and his hand seriously injured.

♪♪

rose: He was shot in the back from a distance.

Either someone didn't wanna get too close

to this heavily armed killer,

or he was running for his life from a deadly enemy.

♪♪

bellinger: It's possible that otzi came out on the wrong end

of a tussle with a neighboring tribe.

Equally, he could've had a deadly confrontation

with members of his own tribe.

Narrator: The coldest case in the world will have to remain on ice,

at least, for the time being.

♪♪

otzi's body and equipment continues to be studied

and, perhaps, with time, may reveal further clues.

♪♪

♪♪

on the banks of an icy stream

running through the heart of the siberian permafrost

lies a secret never before seen on the planet.

This is a little stream feeding a small river

in the middle of the wilderness.

Irving: The only way to reach this site would be by boat or on foot.

It's hundreds of miles from any town.

It's not just remote.

It's nearly inaccessible.

♪♪

narrator: While on a hunting trip in search of reindeer,

two russian businessmen spot something on the bank

that they think might be a telltale sign of their prey.

These hunters spot a small patch of fur

sticking out of the ice and mud.

They think it might lead them to game,

but what they find is astonishing.

♪♪

narrator: The fur is attached to the frozen remains

of a baby wooly rhino.

Scientists nickname the rhino sasha,

after one of the hunters who made the discovery.

A find like this has never been seen before,

anywhere on the planet.

This is the first and, so far, the only one.

♪♪

scientists and archeologists spend their entire careers

actively searching for a find of this magnitude.

Irving: Wooly rhinos were actually common in the plasticine era.

Many adult wooly rhino remains

have been unearthed at other sites,

but baby rhino remains, like this,

have never been found before.

♪♪

rose: The truth is young rhino remains

are almost completely absent from the historical record.

It's one of these things that really makes you

scratch your head and wonder.

Narrator: We have the remains of other infant mammals from the era.

So why are wooly rhino infants so rare?

The wooly rhino first appeared on the planet

around 350,000 years ago.

Like their modern-day counterparts,

wooly rhinos were herbivores

and lived alone or in very small family groups.

Little else is known about them,

mainly because very few fossils like this have ever been found.

Maybe sasha's cause of death can help us understand

why the remains of only one baby rhino

have ever been found on the planet.

Narrator: Scientists excavate sasha from the ice

and relocate the body to the lab,

to find out what might've caused the baby rhino's untimely death.

They clean and examine the body

and that's when they make a surprising discovery.

What they thought was gray fur covering sasha

turns out to be strawberry-blond hair.

The hair color's a really extraordinary detail

that we could've never taken from fossil evidence, alone,

and what sasha is telling us is that the wooly rhino

appeared very different from the rhinos of today.

♪♪

rose: And there's more than just hair.

Sasha's skin, and several other organs, are also intact.

This provides us with lots of evidence

as to what happened to sasha

and gives us a lot of information about an animal

that is at least 10,000 years old.

♪♪

narrator: Sasha's lungs and airways are also intact,

allowing scientists to make an interesting revelation.

Irving: There's sediment in both of sasha's airways.

The left nasal airway is completely blocked.

That suggests that the rhino

could've become trapped in a mud hole.

Narrator: This makes scientists wonder if sasha drowned.

Rose: Sasha was found frozen on a riverbank.

Perhaps there was some kind of an accident

that caused sasha to end up in the water and mud and drown.

♪♪

narrator: But some parts of the story just don't add up.

♪♪

if drowning is the cause of death,

we'd expect to see some serious injury or damage to the lungs.

That finding would help confirm the cause of death.

Narrator: Scientists continue their examination,

in search of more evidence that could confirm sasha's drowning.

But what they find takes the investigation

in an entirely new direction.

♪♪

♪♪

narrator: The remains of an infant wooly rhino

found in the siberian permafrost

raises questions about how it died.

Scientists hope the answer will reveal more

about why so few baby rhino fossils exist.

Sasha's remains show signs of serious injuries.

We can see strange markings

in the lower half of sasha's body,

indicating that it was ripped up or damaged in some way.

♪♪

these aren't the sort of injuries you get from drowning,

so, what else might've caused them?

♪♪

billson: Could these injuries have occurred in a natural disaster?

Maybe sasha was crushed in a rockslide or avalanche.

♪♪

irving: There are no wounds to be found

on the head and shoulders of the remains.

It would be extremely unlikely for one part of the body

to be affected in a rockslide or an avalanche,

but not the rest.

You'd expect to see injuries all over the body,

including the head and shoulders,

so this doesn't appear to have been a natural disaster.

Narrator: Archeologists take a closer look at the strange markings

on the lower part of sasha's body.

Rose: Some of the wounds look like puncture wounds

that were made by a sharp object.

So could humans have hunted and killed sasha?

Narrator: Evidence shows that humans moved into the area

about 40,000 years ago.

The wooly rhino remains

are between 10,000 and 34,000 years old.

Narrator: So, sasha would've been living

side-by-side with ancient humans.

Rhinos are big animals that travel in family groups.

Would humans of that time period have been able to overpower

and bring down even a small rhino?

♪♪

irving: Remains from elsewhere in siberia suggest

that humans were hunting and killing

adult wooly mammoths.

Now, mammoths are much larger than rhinos,

so, in theory, these rhinos

shouldn't have been too big for the prehistoric hunters.

Narrator: But closer examination of the injuries

doesn't support this theory.

♪♪

irving: The injuries on sasha's body appear to be too uniform,

too even, to be from multiple spear strikes.

There appears to be tearing around the wound

that wouldn't be characteristic of a spear attack,

which you'd expect to make a much cleaner puncture wound.

It's unlikely these were caused by spear points.

Narrator: If sasha wasn't killed by humans,

who killed her?

♪♪

the wounds on the body have a distinctive pattern,

that repeats itself.

From the way they're arranged,

they look a lot like teeth marks.

From the size and the shape of the puncture wounds

and the way they're arranged, it suggests sasha was attacked

and partially consumed by a large predator.

♪♪

narrator: Scientists determine that the injuries on the body

are bite marks, consistent with a large cat.

One of the large predator cats

that would've hunted the wooly rhinos

during the pleistocene era was the cave lion.

We haven't seen the remains of other baby rhinos

killed this way.

If cave lions were slaughtering baby rhinos,

why aren't we finding more remains like sasha?

♪♪

narrator: Scientists still have lots of unanswered questions.

From the x-rays, we can see that sasha had bursitis,

which would've seriously inflamed

the rhino's knee joints.

This would've slowed it down, maybe prevented it from running,

and that could've made sasha more vulnerable to the lions.

So it's possible that sasha ran from a cave lion attack,

but the bursitis might have meant

that the little rhino wasn't fast enough to escape.

♪♪

bellinger: One thing is strange.

Lions usually consume most of the flesh of their prey,

but sasha was only partially consumed.

Why didn't the lions finish their meal this time?

♪♪

billson: It's possible that, after the attack,

sasha's mother fended off the cave lions.

A full-size angry rhino

would've been an intimidating sight.

♪♪

that might be why

we have so much of sasha's remains preserved,

but it still doesn't answer

why we don't see more remains of baby wooly rhinos elsewhere.

One theory as to why we don't see so many baby wooly rhinos

is that the number of rhinos was so much smaller,

in comparison to other megafauna,

such as the wooly mammoth.

♪♪

irving: Scientists believe that wooly rhinos bred incredibly slowly.

Low birth rates meant that mother rhinos needed

to be fiercely protective of their young,

from predators and other dangers,

in order for the species to survive.

The bursitis might explain why sasha succumbed to the lions,

but it doesn't really explain

why we haven't found any other baby wooly rhino.

Narrator: There's still a lot we don't know

about why sasha is such a rare find,

but, perhaps, with time, the ice may reveal

more secrets about the wooly rhino.