Scientists unveil 50,000-year-old baby mammoth
Russian scientists have unveiled the remains of a 50,000-year-old baby mammoth, found in thawing permafrost in Siberia’s remote Yakutia region during the summer.
They say “Yana” – named after the river basin where it was discovered – is the world’s best-preserved mammoth carcass.
Weighing over 100 kg (15st 10 lb), 120 cm (4 ft) tall and 200 cm long, it is estimated that Yana was only a year old when she died.
Before this discovery, only six similar finds had been found in the world – five in Russia and one in Canada.
Yana was found by people living nearby in Batagaika Crater, the world’s largest permafrost crater.
“The inhabitants were in the right place at the right time,” said the head of the Lazarev Mammoth Museum Laboratory.
Maxim Cherpasov said, “He noticed that the mammoth was almost completely thawed” and decided to build a makeshift stretcher to lift the mammoth to the surface.
“As a rule, the part that molts first, especially the trunk, is often eaten by modern predators or birds,” he told Reuters news agency.
But “even though the forelimbs may have already been eaten away, the head is remarkably well preserved”, he added.
Gavriil Novgorodov, a researcher at the museum, told Reuters that the giant animal was “probably trapped in a swamp”, and “thus preserved for several tens of thousands of years”.
Yana is studying at the North-Eastern Federal University in Yakutsk, the capital of the region.
Scientists are now conducting tests to confirm when it died.
This is not the only prehistoric discovery found in Russia’s vast permafrost in recent years – Because due to climate change the land that has been frozen for a long time starts melting.
Just last month, scientists had shown its remains in the same area. Partial, mummified body of a saber-toothed catBelieved to be less than 32,000 years old.
And earlier this year, the remains of a 44,000-year-old wolf were also uncovered.
