The body of a young woolly mammoth was found mummified and nearly complete by gold miners in Canada’s Yukon territory.
According to a government press release, the creature was discovered by the miners on Tuesday as they were excavating through permafrost.
The Trondok Hwchin people’s ancestral homeland, the Klondike gold fields, is where the woolly mammoth was discovered.
According to the release, Yukon Geological Survey and University of Calgary geologists believe the female baby mammoth is more than 30,000 years old. It was protected from deterioration by the permafrost layer that covered it.
Its condition of preservation is far greater than that of other woolly mammoth findings since a large portion of the animal’s hair and skin are still there.
The release states that it is the “first near-complete and best-preserved mummified woolly mammoth found in North America.”
Government paleontologist Dr. Grant Zazula said that the discovery was “one of the most incredible mummified ice age animals ever discovered in the world.”
Being part of the recovery of Nun cho ga, the baby woolly mammoth found in the permafrost in the Klondike this week (on Solstice and Indigenous Peoples’ Day!), was the most exciting scientific thing I have ever been part of, bar none. https://t.co/WnGoSo8hPk pic.twitter.com/JLD0isNk8Y
— Prof Dan Shugar (@WaterSHEDLab) June 24, 2022
According to Encyclopaedia Britannica, scientists disagree on the precise date the woolly mammoth went extinct, with some thinking that it was around 4,300 years ago.
If so, they would have endured up until the Great Pyramid of Giza’s construction, which started about 2570 BC.
The enormous beasts previously roamed North American plains. Mammoths, a relative of the present African elephant, were as large when fully grown.
In cave paintings, prehistoric people represented the woolly mammoth. They hunted it for food and made tools out of its tusks.
“There will be one thing that stands out in a person’s entire life and I can guarantee you this is my one thing,” said Brian McCaughan of Treadstone Mining, according to the release.
