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Young mammoth remains discovered in Siberian permafrost after roughly 50,000 years

Researchers in Siberia are conducting tests on a juvenile mammoth whose remarkably well-preserved remains were discovered in thawing permafrost after more than 50,000 years.

Museum official says it's particularly unusual the head and trunk had survived

Researchers uncover 50,000-year-old well-preserved young mammoth

10 hours ago
Duration 0:33
Researchers at North-Eastern Federal University in Yakutsk, Russia, say the carcass of the juvenile mammoth weighs around 110 kg. Locals made the discovery after they found the body thawing in the Siberian permafrost earlier this summer.

Researchers in Siberia are conducting tests on a juvenile mammoth whose remarkably well-preserved remains were discovered in thawing permafrost after more than 50,000 years.

The creature, resembling a small elephant with a trunk, was recovered from the Batagaika crater, a huge depression more than 80 metres deep, which is widening as a result of climate change.

The carcass, weighing more than 110 kilograms, was brought to the surface on an improvised stretcher, said Maxim Cherpasov, head of the Lazarev Mammoth Museum Laboratory in the city of Yakutsk.

He said the mammoth was probably a little over a year old when it died, but tests would enable the scientists to confirm this more accurately. The fact that its head and trunk had survived was particularly unusual.

Two men pose for a picture in front of a carcass of a baby mammoth.
Researchers Gavril Novgorodov and Erel Struchkov pose for a picture next to the carcass of a baby mammoth, on June 13. (Gavril Novgorodov/Reuters)

"As a rule, the part that thaws out first, especially the trunk, is often eaten by modern predators or birds. Here, for example, even though the forelimbs have already been eaten, the head is remarkably well preserved," Cherpasov told Reuters.

It is the latest of a series of spectacular discoveries in the Russian permafrost. Last month, scientists in the same vast northeastern region — known as Sakha or Yakutia —  showed off the 32,000-year-old remains of a tiny saber-toothed cat cub, while earlier this year a 44,000-year-old wolf carcass was uncovered.

A close-up of the carcass of a baby mammoth.
The creature, resembling a small elephant with a trunk, was recovered from the Batagaika crater, a huge depression more than 80 metres deep which is widening as a result of climate change. (Roman Kutukov/Reuters)