Image of the Day: 30,000 Year Old Woolly Mammoth Discovered in Russian Tundra

 

          

 

The Moscow News has reported that an 11-year-old Russian boy stumbled across the 1,100-pound, 30,000-year-old remains of a woolly mammoth shown above in the tundra of the Taymyr peninsula in northern Russia. Scientists labored for a week with axes and steam hoses to dig it out of the permafrost it's been encased in for centuries. Woolly mammoths have been found in the permafrost in Siberia since at least 1929, but this is one of the best preserved with tusks, mouth and rib cage almost completely intact.

The mammoth is being called Zhenya, sharing the nickname with the boy who discovered it; officially it's the Sopkarga mammoth. There are plans for it to be studied by palaeontologists in Moscow and St Petersburg before going on display permanently at the Taymyr Natural History Museum.

Meanwhile, in Japan, a team of scientists are apparently working with DNA from a carcass in a Russian laboratory to produce a clone from degraded, ice-damaged DNA.

The Daily Galaxy via http://www.upi.com

Image Credit: Zoological Institute of the Russian Academy of Sciences/Photas/ITAR-TASS/Press Association Images

Comments

[james]

Hu!!. So The japanese are going to clone a Mammoth. Then what are they going to do with it. Knowing the Japanese they will probably eat it.