A gold miner working in Canada’s Klondike gold fields has discovered a perfectly preserved baby woolly mammoth that is estimated to have died 30,000 years ago.
According to a press release from the local government, indigenous people living in the area have named the mammoth calf Nun Cho ga, which translates to "big baby animal" in the Han language.
Research implies that the mammoth was a female and was frozen during the ice age era. The mammoth is suspected to have roamed the Yukon alongside wild horses, cave lions, and giant steppe bison.
Check out pictures of the baby woolly mammoth below:The frozen mammoth was recovered by geologists after a miner in the Klondike gold fields found the remains. The discovery is proclaimed to be the first near-complete and best-preserved mummified woolly mammoth found in North America.
Per the Weather Channel, Dr. Grant Zazula, the Yukon government paleontologist said the miner had made the "most important discovery in paleontology" in North America.
Zazula revealed on the channel how the mammoth had been preserved, explaining that it still had intact hair, trunk, toenails, and even intestines.
While the Yukon territory has a well-known fossil record of ice age animals, researchers say such mummified remains of animals from this period with the skin and hair untouched are very rare.
Zazula shared a statement on the discovery, writing: "As an ice age paleontologist, it has been one of my lifelong dreams to come face to face with a real woolly 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. I am excited to get to know her more," he added.
Per the Independent, Trʼondek Hwechʼin and the government of Yukon stated that they would work together to preserve and learn more about Nun Cho ga in the coming months as a means to share these stories and information with the community.
Ranj Pillai, Yukon’s minister of tourism and culture, said in a statement: "We are thrilled about this significant discovery of a mummified woolly mammoth calf: Nun Cho ga. Without strong partnerships between placer miners, Trʼondek Hwechʼin, and the Yukon government, discoveries like this could not happen."
