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Russian scientists have unveiled the remains of a 50,000-year-old baby mammoth found in thawing permafrost in the remote Yakutia region of Siberia during the summer.<\/p>\n
They say “Yana” – who has been named after the river basin where she was discovered – is the world’s best-preserved mammoth carcass.<\/p>\n
Weighing in at over 100kg (15st 10lb), and measuring 120cm (4ft) tall and 200cm long, Yana is estimated to have been only about one-year-old when she died.<\/p>\n
Before this find, only six similar discoveries had been found in the world – five in Russia and one in Canada.<\/p>\n
Yana was found in the Batagaika crater, the world’s largest permafrost (ground that is permanently frozen) crater, by people living nearby.<\/p>\n
The residents “were in the right place at the right time”, the head of the Lazarev Mammoth Museum Laboratory said.<\/p>\n
“They saw that the mammoth had almost completely thawed out” and decided to build a make-shift stretcher to lift the mammoth to the surface, said Maxim Cherpasov.<\/p>\n
“As a rule, the part that thaws out first, especially the trunk, is often eaten by modern predators or birds,” he told the Reuters news agency.<\/p>\n
But “even though the forelimbs have already been eaten, the head is remarkably well preserved”, he added.<\/p>\n
A researcher at the museum, Gavril Novgorodov, told Reuters the mammoth “probably got trapped” in a swamp, and was “thus preserved for several tens of thousands of years”.<\/p>\n
Yana is being studied at the North-Eastern Federal University in the region’s capital Yakutsk.<\/p>\n
Scientists are now conducting tests to confirm when it died.<\/p>\n
It is not the only pre-historic discovery to have been found in Russia’s vast permafrost in recent years – as long-frozen ground starts to thaw because of climate change.<\/a><\/p>\n Just last month, scientists in the same region showed off the remains of a partial, mummified body of a sabre-tooth cat<\/a>, thought to be just under 32,000-years-old.<\/p>\n And earlier this year the remains of a 44,000-year-old wolf were also uncovered.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n