Three Russian scientists unveiled this Monday the remains, with an unprecedented state of conservation, of a mammoth calf frozen in Siberia after its death, more than 50,000 years ago. The researchers, from the Northeast Federal University in Yakutsk, removed a white cloth, as if it were a curtain, and practically intact from the animal, found this summer thanks to the thaw. The biologist, rector of the university, has underlined his astonishment. “We were all surprised by its exceptional conservation: there were no losses on the head, trunk, or ears. And the mouth area showed no visible damage or deformations,” Nikolaev says in . “As the calf was found in the Yana River basin, we decided to name it It is”he explains.
The extinct mammoths weighed about seven tons and reached a height of four meters at the withers, the highest part of the back. It is It weighs 180 kilograms and measures about 120 centimeters. The Russian university states that until now only six carcasses of baby mammoths had been discovered in the world: five in Russia, between 1977 and 2010, and another in Canada, in 2022. According to the institution, “It is It is definitely the best preserved in the world.”
In Yakutsk is located, dependent on the Northeastern Federal University. 75% of known mammoth remains have been found in this Siberian region, according to their own figures. The museum houses jewels such as the corpses of a 4,450-year-old horse, an 8,200-year-old bison calf, and a 9,000-year-old elk. Specimens with soft tissues are preserved at 18 degrees below zero.
The chief scientist of the Mammoth Museum, , has announced that “in the near future a comprehensive research program will be organized” on It iswhich will include genetic and microbiological studies. “We still can’t say for sure how old he was exactly, but we assume it could be around a year or a little more. “It grew faster than today’s pups of horses, bison and wolves, because the conditions were harsher and therefore the pups needed to grow quickly to successfully survive the harsh winter,” Cheprasov said in the statement.
Mammoth research has undergone a revolution this year. In July, an international team of scientists announced the first discovery of , preserved in the remains of a female woolly mammoth that died 52,000 years ago and discovered near the remote Russian village of Belaya Gora. For these researchers – among whom were members of the National Center for Genomic Analysis in Barcelona – these “fossils of ancient chromosomes” bring closer the possibility of resurrecting species that have been extinct for millennia, such as saber-toothed tigers, mammoths, woolly rhinos and lions. of the caves.
