Russia presented on Monday the remarkably well-preserved remains of a small 50,000-year-old mammoth, found this summer in the Far North, the latest significant scientific discovery to date in this remote region of the country. This female mammoth was named “Iana”, after the river in whose basin she was found, in Yakutia, a sparsely populated territory in the Russian Far East.
Its carcass was presented to the scientific community on Monday at the North-Eastern Federal University in Yakutsk, the regional capital, the institution announced in a press release. “We were all surprised by the exceptional preservation of this mammoth: there is no loss of the head, trunk, ears, mouth, with no visible damage or deformation,” explained its rector, Anatoli. Nikolayev, quoted in the press release.
Iana, which could be the best preserved mammoth specimen in the world according to the university, weighs 180 kilograms, 120 centimeters in height and less than two meters in length. “This unique discovery will provide information on the ontogeny of mammoths, their adaptive characteristics, the paleo-ecological conditions of their habitat and other aspects,” she said.
Studies are planned to determine in particular the exact age of Iana, which is estimated at “a year or a little more”. Its carcass, 50,000 years old, was discovered this summer on the territory of the Batagaika research station, where other remains of prehistoric animals have already been found.
Before Iana, only six mammoth carcasses had been discovered in the world: five in Russia and one in Canada, according to the university. In Yakutia, an isolated region five times the size of France and bordered by the Arctic Ocean, the permafrost acts like a gigantic freezer preserving prehistoric animals, particularly mammoths. In recent years, the Batagaika station has found remains of prehistoric horses and bison and even the mummy of a lemming.
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