23 Yearbook of Mummy Studies, Vol. 2, pp. 23-29, 6 figs., March 2014 © 2014 by Verlag Dr. Friedrich Pfeil, München, Germany – ISBN 978-3-89937-163-5 A Mountain Hare Mummy from the Zillertaler Alps Doris Döppes 1 , Heather Gill-Frerking 2 , Ulrich Joger 3 , Wilfried Rosendahl 1 and Nikolaus Stümpel 3 Abstract Natural mummies are preserved by the environment in which they died. Environments that are cold and dry may allow bodies to dry out naturally. A mummified hare from the Zillertaler Alps was investigated. In this paper, the results of the analysis of the medical imaging data, and the results of the species identification by DNA, are presented, and the importance of these results in the field of glacier mummification and the natural history are discussed. Apart from the recent date, the discovery is valuable proof of the propagation of the Alpine Mountain Hare in southern Tyrol. This unusual specimen is a rare example of a preserved and well documented glacier animal mummy from Europe. Introduction At a height of 3463 m (11 361 ft), the Hochfernerspitze near Pfitsch (Fig. 1) is one of the highest moun- tains in the Zillertaler Alps, forming a massif with other mountains over 3000 m altitude that is entirely covered by a glacier above a height of 2500 m (8202 ft, Klier & Klier 1996). The mummified hare (Fig. 2) was discovered by S. Landthaler and E. Zoessmaier at 3000 m (9842 ft) above sea level on the north side of the Hochferner Glacier in 2005, and because they had known about the discovery of »Ötzi, the Iceman«, they handed the mummy over to the state authorities in Bozen/Bolzano, Italy (Rosendahl & Döppes 2010). Immediately after the discovery was announced and before being scientifically analyzed the hare came to be known in the media as “Pfitschi”, named after the discovery site, and “Ötzi hare”. The animal was kept at the Museum of Natural History in South Tyrol in Bozen/Bolzano but was never displayed. Today, the mummy is in the exhibition “Mummies of the World”, which tours the U.S.A. from 2010 to 2014. The Alps are presently inhabited by two Lepus species, the Brown Hare (Lepus europaeus) and the Mountain Hare (Lepus timidus). Only the latter colonizes the subalpine and alpine regions of the high Alps (e. g. Grimmberger & Rudloff 2009). Lepus timidus is an arcto-alpine species, inhabiting a wide range in northern Palaearctic from the British Isles to East Siberia, and some isolated relict populations in the Alps, Poland and Japan (Angerbjörn & Flux 1995). According to the fossil record it was the most common and most widely distributed hare species in Europe during last glacial periods of the Pleistocene (Lopez-Martinez 1980). 1 Reiss-Engelhorn-Museen, Mannheim, Germany; E-mail: wilfried.rosendahl@mannheim.de (corresponding author). 2 NTK Services, New Hampshire, USA. 3 State Museum of Natural History, Braunschweig, Germany. Fig. 1. Location of the discovery site of the Mountain Hare mummy “Pfitschi” from the Zillertaler Alps. Germany Italy Austria Innsbruck Bozen/Bolzano Site T T y y y y y r o o l East Tyrol South Tyrol Switzer- land Döppes et al.: A Mountain Hare Mummy from the Zillertaler Alps