Russian scientists have unveiled the fossil of a baby mammoth, whose incredibly well-preserved remains were found in the Siberian region of Yakutia in June, after more than 50,000 years.
The carcass of the female, nicknamed Yana, was discovered by local residents after the expansion of a permafrost crater, according to Russian state media agency TASS.
“We can say that it is one of the best ever found in the world” Maksim Cheprasov, head of the laboratory at the Mammoth Museum at the Northeast Federal University (NEFU) in Yakutsk, told TASS.
According to Cheprasov, the baby mammoth was about a year old when it died and weighed about 400 pounds. The geological age, according to the results of radiocarbon analysis, is 50 thousand years, TASS wrote.
Researchers believe that young mammoths grew faster than the descendants of horses, bison and wolves today because climatic conditions were more severe at that time.
“They needed to get big to withstand the harsh winter,” Cheprasov said, according to TASS.
The mammoth’s remains were discovered in the Batagaika Crater, which has expanded steadily since the 1960s, revealing other prehistoric finds including a horse and a bison, TASS reported.
Local residents discovered the fossil after part of the crater collapsed, revealing half of the mammoth. The front part of the carcass fell to the bottom of the hole, while the back half, including the hind legs, was still in the permafrost, Cheprasov said.
Before this baby mammoth was discovered, a total of six complete skeletons of the animal had been found in the world, five in Russia and one in Canada, according to Cheprasov.
“This is a really unique discovery not only for our university and for Russian science, but also for the world,” Anatoly Nikolaev, the Rector of the North-Eastern Federal University, told TASS.
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This content was originally published in Baby mammoth found in Russia is the best preserved in the world, says scientist on the CNN Brasil website.
Source: CNN Brasil
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