The frozen carcass of a 10,000-year-old baby mammoth has been been uncovered in the permafrost of north-west Siberia, a discovery scientists said could help in climate change studies. The six-month-old frozen female calf is so well preserved that it looks as if it died only days ago, reviving hopes that the hairy beasts could one day walk the Earth again.
The 4ft 3in tall and 110lb gray-and-brown carcass, discovered in May by a reindeer herder in the Yamal-Nenets region, has its trunk and eyes virtually intact and even some fur remaining. The animal's tail and ear were apparently bitten off.
Extinct woolly mammoths - and giant tusks - have turned up in Siberia for centuries. But it is unusual for a complete example to be recovered. The last major find was in 1997 when a family in the neighbouring Taymyr Peninsula came across a tusk attached to what turned out to be a 20,380-year-old mammoth carcass. To find a juvenile mammoth in any condition is extremely rare.
Scientists believe mammoths lived from 4.8 million years ago. Most of them died out 12,000 years ago at the end of the Pleistocene era. Studies suggest climate change or overkill by human hunters as possible reasons leading to their extinction. Some scientists have speculated about an attempt to clone a pure mammoth by fusing the nucleus of a mammoth cell with a modern elephant egg cell stripped of its own DNA.
Mammoth facts
• The woolly mammoth, mammuthus primigenius, ranged widely from Ireland to the east coast of North America.
• Earliest fossils have been found in Africa, dating from the birth of the elephant family five million years ago.
• "Mammoth" comes via Russian from the Tatar language with possible origins in the word mamma, "earth", alluding to the long-held belief, inspired by the remains buried in the permafrost, that mammoths lived underground in burrows.
The 4ft 3in tall and 110lb gray-and-brown carcass, discovered in May by a reindeer herder in the Yamal-Nenets region, has its trunk and eyes virtually intact and even some fur remaining. The animal's tail and ear were apparently bitten off.
Extinct woolly mammoths - and giant tusks - have turned up in Siberia for centuries. But it is unusual for a complete example to be recovered. The last major find was in 1997 when a family in the neighbouring Taymyr Peninsula came across a tusk attached to what turned out to be a 20,380-year-old mammoth carcass. To find a juvenile mammoth in any condition is extremely rare.
Scientists believe mammoths lived from 4.8 million years ago. Most of them died out 12,000 years ago at the end of the Pleistocene era. Studies suggest climate change or overkill by human hunters as possible reasons leading to their extinction. Some scientists have speculated about an attempt to clone a pure mammoth by fusing the nucleus of a mammoth cell with a modern elephant egg cell stripped of its own DNA.
Mammoth facts
• The woolly mammoth, mammuthus primigenius, ranged widely from Ireland to the east coast of North America.
• Earliest fossils have been found in Africa, dating from the birth of the elephant family five million years ago.
• "Mammoth" comes via Russian from the Tatar language with possible origins in the word mamma, "earth", alluding to the long-held belief, inspired by the remains buried in the permafrost, that mammoths lived underground in burrows.
