The mice were originally believed to have been brought to the volcanoes by the Incas.
Tiny mummified mice have been found in one of the harshest environments on Earth, and scientists have been perplexed.The presence of dead mice atop Andean volcanoes has been confusing scientists since the 1970s, when they were first discovered. The discovery of live ones has both added to the mystery and shed new light.The volcanoes surpass 20,000 feet—and the temperatures never rise above freezing. At first, scientists believed they must have been brought up there by the Incas.
By doing this with the mice mummies, they found that some of them had only died a few decades ago, while some at most, died 350 years ago, the study reports. This makes it impossible that they could have been carried there by the Incan empire, which died out a full century before the oldest mice were found.'This particular species of leaf-eared mouse is one of the more common small mammals at high elevations in the Central Andes,' Storz told Newsweek.
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