Perfectly Preserved Woolly Mammoth Found in Siberia

The shaggy ginger coat is just as bright as it was when the animal wandered over the ice-covered terrain.

Its eyes, foot pads and even internal organs are all intact. Yet this is a young woolly mammoth – which lived more than 10,000 years ago.

While many bones have been found before – so we have an idea of how the legendary creatures looked when they roamed the icy plains –  this is unique in being an almost entire frozen carcass.

Experts believe it could yield a treasure trove of information from the past, not only about these creatures, but the early humans who lived alongside them during the Ice Age.

A long straight cut stretches from its head to the centre of its back, as well as an 'unusual patterned opening' on the right flank made of small serrations as if from a primitive saw-like tool. This skilful butchery could not have been the work of a predator such as a lion, and was probably the work of cavemen eking out a living during the Ice Age.

Although mammoths featured in cave paintings from the time, this is the first evidence that humans preyed on them in the days when ice sheets covered 40 per cent of the northern hemisphere.

 

Mammoth discovery: Yuka is thought to be about two and a half years old

The find suggests humans may have contributed to their extinction, before the creatures were finally wiped out in the great thaw ten millennia ago.

The 6ft-long mammoth, nicknamed Yuka, appears to have escaped another predator at an earlier stage as it had a broken leg and other injuries which suggest an epic struggle. 

Toe-tally amazing: Yuka has been preserved in spectacularly good condition
 

'Were humans using the lions to catch mammoths and then moving the lions off their kill?'

Mammoths evolved from African elephants when the Ice Age set in. They were around twice the size of today's elephants, weighed up to eight tons, and their long tusks helped them fight predators and pick grass and shrubs out of the ice. 

Scientists could dissect Yuka or use infrared scanning to look at its organs and understand how mammoths managed to adapt to the harsh conditions. Using the body tissue, which is normally lost, they can also use the latest technology to analyze its genome, raising the possibility of cloning a mammoth from the remains

.

Bernard Buiges, of the organization Mammathus, obtained the carcass, whose gender was not specified, from the Siberian tusk hunters. He is confident that they were not responsible for removing the bones and that it was the work of Man.  

The presenter, anatomist and broadcaster Professor Alice Roberts, of Birmingham University, said it was like a 'time machine into the past' , adding: 'It just doesn't look like an animal which died 10,000 years ago. It looks so fresh, almost alive. It's a historic moment.'

Professor Adrian Lister of the Natural History Museum said:  'This looks like one of the most complete mammoth carcasses we've ever found. 

'The vast majority of fossils are just bones and teeth because that's what survives under the ground. So to find a complete carcass with all its flesh and skin and hair like this, it can only happen in the very far north of Siberia.'