Gold miners discovered mammoth skeletons at the Little Flake mine in Yukon, Canada.
According to local newspaper The Whitehorse Star, a group of gold miners in Yukon, Canada, discovered woolly mammoth skeletons at the Little Flake mine, near Dawson City. Parts include ribs, teeth and more.
Grant Zazula, a paleontologist with the Yukon regional government, said it was an “extremely exciting” discovery, raising many questions to be answered.
He explained that, normally, one often encounters individual bones, it is very rare to find a partial skeleton intact and even more rarely to find multiple skeletons in the same location.
The paleontologist thinks the bones found may belong to four or five woolly mammoths and that they could be a family or a herd.
Judging by the nearby volcanic tephra, scientists say the mammoths may have died out about 29,000 years ago.
In The Whitehorse Star, paleontologist Zazula said: “We have all the data to determine what happened, uncovering part of the mystery of whether the mammoths were involved. related or not and how they died’.
Woolly mammoths roamed North America and Eurasia during the Ice Age and most became extinct about 10,000 years ago. Scientists still don’t know what led to their extinction, but many believe that climate change and an increase in the number of human hunters are the main causes.
The mammoth’s closest relative is the modern Asian elephant, with the main difference being that the mammoths had thick, dense fur to help them survive freezing temperatures.
Since the gold rush over a century ago, gold miners in the Yukon have found mammoth bones and tusks.
“Miners need to remove all the frozen silt to reach the gold-filled gravel at the bottom of the valley, and in doing so, they often uncover the remains of animals of the time,” explains Zazula. ice age”.
The cold but dry climate of the Yukon suggests that glaciers did not form there during the Ice Age, making it an attractive habitat for herbivorous mammals.
Zazula added that miners will continue mining at the site for several more weeks and will likely find even more mammoth skeletons.
The mammoth skeletons found were turned over to the authorities for research.
