Siberia, September 18
A discovery of the woolly mammoth with soft tissues intact was made by Yamal peninsula reindeer herders, who reported the sensational find to Salekhard scientists.
Results of the first excavation confirmed that the mammoth was likely a grown up animal, and that while some of its soft tissues survived being in permafrost for at least ten thousand years, the brain didn’t make it.
Permafrost is a thick subsurface layer of soil that remains frozen throughout the year, which happens chiefly in Polar Regions.
This is the first adult mammoth found on the Yamal peninsula. Parts of its skull, several large limb bones, a part of a forelimb with preserved soft tissue were extracted during the first expedition to Seyakha and are already being studied.