A mummified baby woolly mammoth has been found in the Klondike gold fields, the Yukon government announced Friday. It said the animal found within Tr’ondëk Hwëch’in Traditional Territory earlier this week is the most complete and best preserved mammoth found in North America to date.
The territory said miners working on Eureka Creek uncovered the animal while excavating permafrost on Tuesday. Read more: Colossal bet aims to revive, unleash woolly mammoth in Canada’s Arctic Geologists from the Yukon Geological Survey and University of Calgary who recovered the mammoth suggest it died and was frozen during the ice age, more than 30,000 years ago.
Ice age paleontologist Grant Zazula said it has been his lifelong dream to “come face to face with a real woolly mammoth” and he is excited to find out more about the animal. “The discovery of a mummified baby animal is something totally unprecedented.
Mummified remains of Ice Age animals are incredibly rare in the world,” he said in an interview Friday. Zazula, who has been studying the ice age for nearly 25 years, said the mammoth is about 140 centimetres long.