A 26,000 year old red fox skeleton has been recovered by a team of scientists from the Uinta Mountains in northeastern Utah. The team included members from State Parks, Ashley National Forest, and a group of Utah cavers. The radiocarbon of the bones dates the fox to the last glacial maximum during the Ice Ages. “It was a gorgeous specimen,” said the Utah Field House of Natural History State Park Museum’s John Foster, who was the project’s lead organizer. “Almost the entire animal lying where it had been for so long, nearly every bone intact and well preserved. We don’t often see specimens like that.” The nearly complete skeleton, nicknamed “Roxy”, was found lying on its left side in a less accessible part of the cave’s back. Her name was selected thanks to a poll at the museum. “This specimen is one of the oldest directly dated records of the red fox species,” said Ice Age mammal expert Greg McDonald, a retired National Park Service paleontologist. “The first in Utah, but among the oldest in North America.” The recovery expedition took nearly 16 hours and took place in Whiterocks Cave at about 8,600 feet elevation.
