Russian specialists have announced at the Mammoth Museum in the Russian region of Yakutia the discovery of a 50,000-year-old calf in a very good state of preservation to which they have given the name Yana.
“It is one of the best preserved specimens that have been found to date worldwide,” said the head of research at the Mammoth Museum of the Federal University of Yakutia, Maxim Cheprasov, during the presentation of the discovery. broadcast on the Russian social network VKontakte.
The scientist has indicated that “in total six mammoths have been found in good condition, five in Russia and one in Canada.”
“The previous mammoth found in Russia was baby Yuka, in 2010,” he recalled, pointing out that “this year, in June, another baby mammoth was found in Batagaika in a unique state of conservation.” The Batagaika crater, located in Eastern Siberia, is considered the largest permafrost crater in the world, whose size is constantly growing due to global warming, extending over more than a kilometer and with a depth of up to 100 meters.
The little mammoth Yana, Cheprasov noted, has a height of 1.2 meters and weighs about 180 kilograms. “The exact age of the animal has not yet been determined but we assume that it would be approximately one year or slightly older,” he indicated.
According to the expert, “mammoth calves grew faster than the calves of today’s horses, bison and wolves, since the climatic conditions were more severe and they needed to grow faster before the cold winters. The creature was found by residents of the town of Batagai.
“They were at the right time and in the right place to see how half of the body emerged from the crater wall, at a depth of 40 meters,” Cheprasov said.
He explained that due to the weight and pressure of the earth, Yana’s body split in half: the first fell to the bottom of the crater and the second, which included the pelvis and hind limbs, remained in the permafrost and was later recovered. by the specialists.
The rector of the Federal University of Yakutia, Anatoly Nikolaev, has pointed out that a discovery like this “does not happen every year, it is really a matter of chance and luck”, since if it had happened several days or weeks later “it would not have been so conserved”. “It is a unique event not only for our university but for Russian and world science,” he concluded.
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