INSUBCONTINENT EXCLUSIVE:
A gold miner found a mummified baby wooly mammoth that was almost perfectly preserved in the Trʼondëk Hwëchʼin Traditional
Territory in Yukon, Canada. According to a press release from the local government, the female baby mammoth has been named Nun cho ga by
the First Nation Tr&ondëk Hwëch&in elders, which translates to &big baby animal& in the Hän language. Nun cho ga is the most complete
mummified mammoth discovered in North America, Science Alert reported.Nun cho ga died and was frozen in permafrost during the ice age, over
30,000 years ago, said the press release
She would have roamed the Yukon alongside wild horses, cave lions, and giant steppe bison. The frozen mammoth was recovered by geologists
after a young miner in the Klondike gold fields found the remains while digging up dirt.Dr
Grant Zazula, the Yukon government&s paleontologist, said the miner had made the &most important discovery in paleontology in North
America,& reported The Weather Channel.The baby mammoth was probably with her mother when it ventured off a little too far and got stuck in
the mud, Zazula told The Weather Channel.Professor Dan Shugar, from the University of Calgary, part of the team who excavated the wooly
mammoth, said that this discovery was the &most exciting scientific thing I have ever been part of.&He described how immaculately the
mammoth had been preserved, saying that it still had intact toenails, hide, hair, trunk, and even intestines, with its last meal of grass
still present. According to the press release, Yukon is renowned for its store of ice age fossils, but rarely are such immaculate and
well-preserved finds discovered
Zazula wrote in the press release that &as an ice age paleontologist, it has been one of my lifelong dreams to come face to face with a real
wooly mammoth.&&That dream came true today
Nun cho ga is beautiful and one of the most incredible mummified ice age animals ever discovered in the world.&The wooly mammoth, about the
size of the African elephant, roamed the earth until about 4,000 years ago
Early humans hunted them for food and used mammoth bones and tusks for art, tools, and dwellings
Scientists are divided as to whether hunting or climate change drove them into extinction.The post 30,000-year-old baby mammoth found almost
perfectly preserved in Canada first appeared on Ariana News.
