Russian scientists have recovered the exceptionally well-preserved remains of a 50,000-year-old baby mammoth. The carcass was discovered by chance by villagers in the north-east Siberian taiga after the thawing permafrost had exposed it, as the Russian news agency Tass reported.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
On Monday, the mammoth calf was presented to the public at the Yakutsk University Museum. It is a female animal with a height of around 1.2 metres and a weight of around 180 kilograms. \u2018So far, only six well-preserved mammoth carcasses have been found worldwide: five in Russia and one in Canada,\u2019 explained Maxim Chesprasov, head of the museum laboratory. This specimen is one of the best preserved in the world. Further investigations will determine the exact age of the find.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Remains of the mammoths, which became extinct around 10,000 years ago, are well preserved, especially in the frozen soils of Siberia and Canada. During the Ice Age, the animals played an important role for humans, who not only hunted them, but also immortalised them in cave drawings and sculptures made of mammoth ivory.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Typical of the Ice Age elephants were their curved tusks, which were up to five metres long. Researchers assume that these were mainly used to search for food under the thick snow cover. Food remains found in the stomachs of excavated carcasses prove that mammoths were herbivores.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Russian scientists have recovered the exceptionally well-preserved remains of a 50,000-year-old baby mammoth. The carcass was discovered by chance by villagers in the north-east Siberian taiga after the thawing permafrost had exposed it, as the Russian news agency Tass reported. Up to five metres long, curved tusks On Monday, the mammoth calf was presented to […]\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":9925,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"inline_featured_image":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[239],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-9928","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-news-en"],"yoast_head":"\n