Smithsonian Sparks

Saber-toothed squirrels never lived during an ice age. (Sorry, Scrat.)

January 20, 2022
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Skeleton of a small rodent holding a nut

Douglassciurus jeffersoni, Smithsonian’s National Museum of Natural History

Squirreling away this winter? This squirrel ancestor, Douglassciurus jeffersoni, lived 38 to 34 million years ago in what is now Wyoming, millions of years before the last ice age.

In the “Objects of Wonder” exhibition at Smithsonian’s National Museum of Natural History, the creature is posed with its very own fossil walnut. The snack is from the same period, the Eocene, though it was found in present-day Oregon.

While it may resemble a character from “Ice Age,” the species shown in the movie has never existed. Paleontologists have yet to find a saber-tooth squirrel at any time during squirrels’ evolutionary history. There were squirrels during the last ice age—all the squirrel species you see today lived at that time—but this creature in the museum’s collection is much older.

Douglassciurus is the oldest squirrel genus, and it first appears in the fossil record about 40 million years ago. The species D. jeffersoni appears a few million years after.

They help tell the story that only a small fraction of the museum’s collections are on display at any time, while the rest are squirreled away for safekeeping and scientific research.

Learn more squirrely facts and uncover many squirrels across our collections.