Siberia

Frozen mammoth gets day in sun

YOKOHAMA – An almost perfectly preserved frozen mammoth, excavated from the permafrost in eastern Siberia, was unveiled to the media Tuesday in Yokohama, where it will be on display from Saturday.The 3-meter-tall mammoth is a 10-year-old female and is presumed to have died about 39,000 years ago. The frozen carcass, named “Yuka” after Russia’s Sakha (Yakutia) Republic where it was discovered, is believed to be one of the world’s largest.Excavated in 2010, Yuka has a long trunk, arms and legs preserved in almost perfect condition. Since then, the carcass was conserved and studied by researchers at an institute in Russia....

Ancient Siberians may have rarely hunted mammoths

Contrary to their hunting reputation, Stone Age Siberians killed mammoths only every few years when they needed tusks for toolmaking, a new study finds.People living between roughly 33,500 and 31,500 years ago hunted the animals mainly for ivory, say paleontologist Pavel Nikolskiy and archaeologist Vladimir Pitulko of the Russian Academy of Sciences. Hunting could not have driven mammoths to extinction, the researchers report June 5 in the Journal of Archaeological Science.On frigid tundra with few trees, mammoth tusks substituted for wood as a raw material for tools, they propose. Siberian people ate mammoth meat after hunts, but food was not their primary goal....

Perfectly preserved woolly mammoth discovered in Arctic

MOSCOW — Russian researchers say they have discovered a perfectly preserved woolly mammoth carcass with liquid blood on a remote Arctic island, fueling hopes of cloning the Ice Age animal.They say the frozen remains of a female mammoth were so well-preserved that blood was found in ice cavities when they were broken up.Semyon Grigoryev, the head of the Mammoth Museum who led the expedition, said Thursday the carcass was preserved because its lower part was stuck in pure ice. He said the find could provide scientific material for cloning a mammoth....