Amazing woolly mammoth carcass found in Siberia


Amazing mammoth carcass found in Siberia
Amazing mammoth carcass found in Siberia

PA


An 11-year-old boy has found a well-preserved mammoth carcass while out walking his dog in northern Siberia.

The remains were discovered at the end of August in Sopochnaya Karga, 3,500km (2,200 miles) northeast of Moscow, according to the BBC.

A team of experts from St Petersburg spent fie days extracting the body from frozen mud in September.

They estimate the mammoth to have been two metres tall and 500kg in weight, and guessed its age at the time of its death to be around 16.

Amazing mammoth carcass found in Siberia
Amazing mammoth carcass found in Siberia

PA


The carcass has been named Zhenya, after Zhenya Salinder, the young boy who found it.

Alexei Tikhonov, from the St Petersburg Zoology Institute, led the team excavating the mammoth, and said this specimen was likely to have been killed by Ice Age humans, or by a rival mammoth.

Sergei Gorbunov, from the International Mammoth Committee, which works to recover and safeguard remains, said: "We had to use both traditional instruments such as axes, picks, shovels as well as such devices as this "steamer" which allowed us to thaw a thin layer of permafrost.

"Then we cleaned it off, and then we melted more of it. It took us a week to complete this task."

Woolly mammoths grew up to four metres (13 feet) in height and 10 tons in weight.

According to the Star Tribune, they migrated across huge areas between Great Britain and North America, and thought to have died out around 10,000 years ago, driven to extinction by humans and a changing climate.

Most mammoth carcasses have been found in the Siberian permafrost, and many discoveries have been that of calves.


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