A child mammoth carcass present in an unprecedented state of conservation | Science | EUROtoday

Three Russian scientists this Monday unveiled the stays, with an unprecedented state of conservation, of a frozen mammoth calf in Siberia after its demise, greater than 50,000 years in the past. The researchers, from the Northeastern Federal University in Yakutsk, eliminated a white fabric, as if it have been a curtain, and found the virtually intact corpse of the animal, discovered this summer season because of the thaw. Biologist Anatoly Nikolaev, rector of the college, 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 a press release. “As the calf was found in the Yana River basin, we decided to name it It is”he explains.

Mammoths, extinct about 4,000 years in the past, weighed about seven tons and reached a top of 4 meters on the withers, the very best a part of the again. It is It weighs 180 kilograms and measures about 120 centimeters. The Russian college states that till now solely six carcasses of child mammoths had been found on the earth: 5 in Russia, between 1977 and 2010, and one other in Canada, in 2022. According to the establishment, “It is It is definitely the best preserved in the world.”

In Yakutsk there’s the Mammoth Museum, depending on the Northeastern Federal University. 75% of recognized mammoth stays have been discovered on this Siberian area, based on their very own figures. The museum homes jewels such because 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 delicate tissues are preserved at 18 levels beneath zero.

The chief scientist of the Mammoth Museum, Maxim Cheprasov, has introduced that “in the near future a comprehensive research program will be organized” on It iswhich can embrace genetic and microbiological research. “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 discovery for the first time of its three-dimensional DNA structure, 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” deliver nearer the potential for resurrecting species which have been extinct for millennia, equivalent to saber-toothed tigers, mammoths, woolly rhinos and lions. of the caves.