A neighbourhood adventure led an 11-year-old Russian boy to discover remains of a 30,000-year-old, nearly intact, woolly mammoth.
Yevgeny Salinder found the remains of the mammoth on Sopochnaya Karga cape in Russia’s northernmost peninsula of Taymyr, the Moscow News reported.
The body which has been named ‘Zhenya’ after the boy’s nickname is that of a male mammoth which died at the age of 15-16, about 30,000 years ago.
The total weight of the remains is more than 500 kg, and that includes the right half of the body with soft tissue, skin and hair, scull with one ear, a tusk, various bones and even reproductive organs.
It is believed to be the second best preserved mammoth discovery and the best mammoth find since 1901.
Zhenya discovered the body 3 kilometres from Sopkarga polar meteorological station, where he lives with his family. It was later taken to Dudinka in a helicopter and put in an ice chamber there.