Remains of a wooly mammoth have been discovered by a young boy walking his dogs in the permafrost of Sopochnaya Karga, in the north of Russia.

The region, which lies 3,500km north-east of Moscow, lies on the Taymyr peninsula which extends out into the Arctic ocean. The local climate is hostile, with average high temperatures in July at just 5C, and average lows in January that drop down to -33.

As such, when the mammoth was killed (likely either by Ice Age humans or by other mammoths) its body will have frozen rather than decaying. It's estimated to have been around 16 years old when it died, standing two metres tall and weighing approximately half a tonne. It retains one of its tusks.

The beast has been named Zhenya after Zhenya Salinder, the boy who made the discovery. He alerted local officials, who in turn contacted the St Petersberg Zoology institute. The institute sent a team to the site to recover the specimen.

Sergei Gorbunov, from the International Mammoth Committee, which works to recover and safeguard such remains, told the BBC: "We had to use both traditional instruments such as axes, picks, shovels as well as such devices as this 'steamer' which allowed us to thaw a thin layer of permafrost. Then we cleaned it off, and then we melted more of it. It took us a week to complete this task."

The specimen will now be preserved for further study and perhaps, one day, a cloning programme.

Image credit: Shutterstock

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