MOSCOW, July 28 (Reuters) – Russian scientists are poring
over the stunningly well-preserved bones of an adult woolly
mammoth that roamed the earth at least 10,000 years ago, after
local inhabitants discovered its remains in the shallows of a
north Siberian lake.
Part of its skull, several ribs and foreleg bones, some with
soft tissue still attached to them, were retrieved from Russia’s
remote Yamal peninsula above the Arctic circle on July 23.
Scientists are still searching the site for other bones.
Similar finds in Russia’s vast Siberian region have happened
with increasing regularity as climate change warming the Arctic
at a faster pace than the rest of the world has thawed the
ground in some areas long locked in permafrost.
Scientists circulated images in December of a prehistoric
puppy, thought to be 18,000 years old, that was found in the
permafrost region of Russia’s Far East in 2018.
The mammoth remains are at least 10,000 years old, although
researchers don’t yet know exactly when it walked the earth or
how old it was when it died, said Dmitry Frolov, director of the
Scientific Centre for Arctic studies.
Researchers have found mammoth fossils dating from up to
30,000 years ago in Russia, he said.
Yevgeniya Khozyainova, a scientist from a local museum, said
it was unusual to find so many bones belonging to a single
species and to know where they came from.
“Of course, we’d like to find the remaining parts, to
understand how complete a find it is. Whenever there is soft
tissue left behind, it is valuable material to study,” she said.
