What a find! Permafrost releases well-preserved baby mammoth
From Jörg Vogelsänger
Russia - What a find! The melting permafrost is constantly revealing spectacular fossils - such as a young pachyderm from the Ice Age.
Russian researchers have recovered the exceptionally well-preserved remains of a 50,000-year-old mammoth baby after all this time.
According to the Russian state agency Tass, villagers in the north-eastern Siberian taiga came across the animal carcass by chance, which had been exposed by the thawing permafrost.
On Monday of this week, the mammoth was presented in a university museum in Yakutsk. The calf in question was female, a proud 1.2 meters tall and weighed around 180 kilograms.
"So far, only six well-preserved mammoth carcasses have been found worldwide: five in Russia and one in Canada," explained the museum's laboratory director, Maxim Chesprasov. This specimen is one of the best preserved in the world.
Baby mammoth found in Russia: How old is the calf?
The exact age still has to be determined on the basis of further investigations.
Remains of the mammoth, which became extinct 10,000 years ago, have been preserved mainly in the frozen soils of Siberia and Canada.
During the Ice Age, it was an important hunting animal for humans, who immortalized it in cave drawings and as sculptures made of mammoth ivory.
Characteristic of the Ice Age elephant are its curved tusks, which are up to five meters long. Researchers assume that these were mainly used for foraging under the snow cover.
The giants were herbivores, as food remains from the stomachs of excavated mammoth carcasses have shown.