Russian specialists announced this Monday at the Mammoth Museum in the Russian region of Yakutia the discovery of a 50,000-year-old mammoth calf in very good condition to whom they gave the name Yana.
“It’s about 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 indicated that “in total there have been six mammoths 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 mammoth calf was found in Batagáika in a unique state of conservation.”
The Batagaika crater, located in Eastern Siberia, is considered the largest permafrost crater existing worldwide 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 YanaCheprasov commented, he is 1.2 meters tall and weighs around 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.
fell into a crater
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 wallat a depth of 40 meters,” commented Cheprasov.
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 specialists.
The rector of the Federal University of Yakutia, Anatoly Nikolaev, noted that a discovery like this “does not happen every year, it is really about chance and luck”, since if it had happened several days or weeks later “it would not have been so preserved.” “It is a unique event not only for our university but for Russian and world science,” he concluded.
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