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Capital Management Jakarta Indonesia - Yevgeny Salinder, an 11-year old
Russian boy, is the one who discovered the massive remains of the mammoth in
August.
The mammoth, estimated to be at
its 16 year when it died measured 2 meters and weighed 1,000 pounds, was
excavated from the Siberian permafrost last month.
”It is the mammoth of the
century,” said Professor Alexei Tikhonov of the Zoological Museum in St Petersburg.
According to a Russian scientist, the
well-preserved mammoth could be attacked by another mammoth or an Ice Age man.
It was best preserved remains of a mature mammoth but its DNA was already
damaged and would be difficult to use for cloning.
The International Mammoth
Committee working to recover and protect ancient remains: “We had to use both
traditional instruments such as axes, picks, shovels as well as such devices as
this ‘steamer’ which allowed us to thaw a thin layer of permafrost. Then we
cleaned it off, and then we melted more of it. It took us a week to complete
this task.”
A group of researchers from
different countries have visited the site in September and they were surprised
to see that the remains were not only made up of bones but in fact, complete
with hair, one tusk and soft tissues.
“We can see that this animal was
very well adapted to the northern environment, accumulating massive amounts of
fat. This animal likely died during the summer period as we can’t see much of
its undercoat, but it had already accumulated a sufficient amount of fat,” said
Aleksey Tikhonov from the Russian Academy of Sciences.
Principal analysis on the
creature’s remains has disproved that the big humps on mammoths depicted in
cave paintings in European countries were not actually extension of their bone
structure but great reserves of fat that helped them manipulate their body
temperature during long winter seasons.
The mammoth, named
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