An immaculately preserved woolly mammoth, believed to be about 35,000 years old, has been discovered in Canada. A gold miner is said to have stumbled across the remains in the Klondike gold fields within Trʼondëk Hwëchʼin, a First Nation area located in the Yukon territory.
Goldminers in Canada’s Yukon region chanced upon a mummified baby woolly mammoth believed to be over 30,000 years old pic.twitter.com/j4BW1IozH3
— Reuters (@Reuters) June 27, 2022
- The woolly mammoth was preserved by Canada’s permafrost. Miners excavating through the permafrost came across the animal during this process, with Trʼondëk Hwëchʼin Elders naming the calf Nun cho ga, or “baby big animal” in the Hän language, Metro reports.
- Paleontologists are overjoyed with the discovery. “She’s perfect and she’s beautiful,” Grant Zazula, the paleontologist in the Yukon territory, told the CBC. “She has a trunk. She has a tail. She has tiny little ears. She has the little prehensile end of the trunk where she could use it to grab grass.”
- The Yukon has had its fair share of prehistoric discoveries. Ice age animals have been found over the years, but none as immaculately preserved as the woolly mammoth calf, which had skin and hair still attached. Nun cho ga is believed to be the most complete mummified woolly mammoth not just in Canada but in all of North America.
- The calf is said to be female. She’s roughly the same size as the 42,000-year-old woolly mammoth “Lyuba” which was discovered back in 2017 in Siberia. Geologists from the Yukon Geological Survey and the University of Calgary believe that Nun cho ga may have died and then become frozen in the permafrost more than 30,000 years ago.
- Researchers hope to learn more about Nun cho ga in the coming months. Trʼondëk Hwëchʼin and the Government of Yukon plan to work together to learn more about the animal and what life was like for her when she was alive.
