Russian scientists have revealed the remains of a 50,000-year-old mammoth found in melting permafrost in the remote Yakutia region of Siberia this summer.
They say that “Yana” – named after the river basin where it was found – is the best preserved mammoth carcass in the world.
Weighing in at over 100kg (15st 10lb), and measuring 120cm (4ft) tall and 200cm long, Yana is estimated to have been only about one year old when she died.
Before this discovery, only six similar discoveries were found in the world – five in Russia and one in Canada.
Yana was discovered in the Batagaika crater, the world's largest permafrost crater (permanently frozen ground), by people who live nearby.
The inhabitants were “in the right place at the right time”, said the head of the Mammoth Museum Laboratory Lazarev.
“They saw that the mammoth had almost completely melted” and decided to build a motion streamer to lift the mammoth to the surface, Maxim Cherpasov said.
“As a rule, the part that melts first, especially the trunk, is often eaten by modern predators or birds,” he told the Reuters news agency.
But “although the forelimbs have already been eaten, the head is well preserved,” he said.
A researcher at the museum, Gavril Novgorodov, told Reuters that the mammoth was “trapped” in a swamp, and was “thus preservedfor several tens of thousands of years” .
Yana is studying at the North-Eastern Federal University in the regional capital Yakutsk.
Scientists are now carrying out tests to determine when he died.
This is not the only prehistoric find found in Russia's vast permafrost in recent years – because ground that has been frozen for a long time is beginning to fade due to climate change.
Just last month, scientists in the same area showed the remains of partial, spiny body of a saber-toothed catbelieved to be just under 32,000 years old.
And earlier this year the remains of a 44,000 year old wolf were also found.
