Morphological and Tissue Characterization with 3D Reconstruction of a 350-Year-Old Austrian Ardea purpurea Glacier Mummy

Abstract

Glaciers are dwindling archives, releasing animal mummies preserved in the ice for centuries due to climate changes. As preservation varies, residual soft tissues may differently expand the biological information content of such mummies. DNA studies have proven the possibility of extracting and analyzing DNA preserved in skeletal residuals and sediments for hundreds or thousands of years. Paleoradiology is the method of choice as a non-destructive tool for analyzing mummies, including micro-computed tomography (micro-CT) and magnetic resonance imaging (MRI). Together with radiocarbon dating, histo-anatomical analyses, and DNA sequencing, these techniques were employed to identify a 350-year-old Austrian Ardea purpurea glacier mummy from the Ötztal Alps. Combining these techniques proved to be a robust methodological concept for collecting inaccessible information regarding the structural organization of the mummy. The variety of methodological approaches resulted in a distinct picture of the morphological patterns of the glacier animal mummy. The BLAST search in GenBank resulted in a 100% and 98.7% match in the cytb gene sequence with two entries of the species Purple heron (Ardea purpurea; Accession number KJ941160.1 and KJ190948.1) and a 98% match with the same species for the 16 s sequence (KJ190948.1), which was confirmed by the anatomic characteristics deduced from micro-CT and MRI.