Urals fishermen catch… mammoth skull
Published 09 July, 2009, 21:08
In what must be their biggest and most spectacular catch, fishermen in the Urals have found the skull of a mammoth.
The remains of the giant Ice Age mammal's head were found on a riverbank.
“The fishermen saw something standing out in a riverbank and dug out the skull,” Pavel Kosintsev, head of the paleozoologial group of the local institute of ecology of flora and fauna of Russian Academy of Sciences, told RIA news agency. “Judging by their amateur video, there is no doubt these are a mammoth remains, and what’s important, they are in a very good condition.”
The bones could belong to an animal that lived in the area from 20,000 to 40,000 years ago.
Experts are heading to the village, where they will carry out detailed research on the find. They hope to find other remains that could help explain the mystery of why the species died out.
“Through the discovery we’ll learn more about the climate conditions of the time it lived, and make conclusions about the climate change in the future,” said Kosintsev. He added that now they will find out which form of mammoths existed in the Urals, as well as know more about the animals’ evolution.
This discovery is a unique one, as scientists quite rarely come across a fully intact mammoth skull, unlike bones or some fragments of skeleton.
The last time such a discovery was registered was in the 19th century.
The mammoth skull is eventually expected to be placed in a museum.
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