BREAKING : A Russian child smelled something funny — and his nose led him to what scientists say is a major discovery.
Turns out he found the best-preserved woolly mammoth of the century, reports Alexei Tikhonov of the Zoological Museum in St. Petersburg, Russia.
Check out this pic, as shown in Australia’s The Age.
Photo Credit: AFP.
According to reports, global warming is responsible for the find. The boy,11, told researchers he first discovered something sticking out of the unfrozen ground with a pronounced foul smell.
The Age reports: .
As global warming has thawed ground in northern Russia that is usually permanently frozen, a variety of mammoth remains have been uncovered. But researchers say this is the best-preserved one ever found. Yevgeny Salinder, whose family lives near a polar station on the Taimyr Peninsula, discovered the frozen prehistoric animal when he was walking along the banks of the Yenisei River in late August.
“It is the mammoth of the century,” Alexei Tikhonov, of the Zoological Museum in St Petersburg.
Interestingly, the finding came two days after a San Antonio, Texas boy accidentally stumbled on a Mammoth tooth — a giant one — in the family back yard. There’s a coincidence for you.
The prehistoric mammoth is the ancestor of the elephant of today, but the mammoths were far bigger and roamed the Earth, we should note, during the time of the earliest cave-based humans.
Here’s a pic of what scientists believe they would have looked like. At more than 10 feet tall and 10 tons in weight, the woolly mammoth was huge. . Check out this artist’s rendering:
Photo courtesy: Wikimimedia Commons
We’ll be following this closely in our science coverage. in Stay tuned.
That’s one big mama, alright. Scientists are calling the late Mammoth Jenna . We’ll be following this story as it develops.
For aNewDomain.net, I’m Tom Ewing.
Interesting that the widely disputed global warming is given as reason for this find. Will naysayers be convinced?