“This is one of the most incredible Ice Age mummified animals discovered anywhere in the world.

Paleontologist Grant Zazula was enthusiastic after a rare discovery made in the Canadian Far North.

Goldfield workers have stumbled upon the mummified remains of a nearly complete baby woolly mammoth.

He "is magnificent", assured in a press release the specialist, who is eager to know more about this baby, probably a female called "Nun cho ga" (for "big baby animal" in the native language), and whose skin and hair are intact.

'She's perfect and she's beautiful,' said Yukon government palaeontologist Dr Grant Zazula of Nun cho ga, the first whole baby woolly mammoth found in North America #IceAgeAmerica



📷 Government of Yukon https://t.co/q6zHMtqmop pic.twitter.com /PosxZcEA8m

— Prof Jamie Woodward (@Jamie_Woodward_) June 25, 2022


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An animal that died 30,000 years ago

The remains were found by digging the permafrost south of Dawson City, in the Yukon Territory, bordering US Alaska.

The animal is said to have died more than 30,000 years ago, when the area was roamed by woolly mammoths, wild horses, cave lions and giant steppe bison.

It is the first nearly complete mummified mammoth in such a good state of preservation found in North America.

Part of the remains of a baby mammoth nicknamed Effie were found in 1948, in an Alaskan gold mine, along with a 42,000-year-old mummified specimen in Siberia in 2007, nicknamed Liouba, and similarly cut.

The Yukon Territory is known around the world for its fossils of Ice Age animals, but "mummified remains with skin and hair are rarely unearthed," the Yukon government said.

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  • Mammoth

  • Canada

  • Science

  • Paleontology