A gold miner discovered a mummified baby woolly mammoth in the traditional territory of Canada.
The female baby mammoth has been named Nun cho ga by the First Nation Hwch'in elders, which means "big baby animal" in the Hn language.
Nun cho ga is the most complete mummified mammoth ever found.
According to the press release, Nun cho ga was frozen to the ground over 30,000 years ago. She would have been in the territory with horses, cave lions, and bison.
Baby woolly mammoth found in Trʼondëk Hwëchʼin Traditional Territory, Yukon, Canada. (Yukon Government)
The mammoth was found in the gold fields by a young miner.
The most important discovery in paleontology in North America was made by the miner.
Zazula told The Weather Channel that the baby mammoth got stuck in the mud after venturing off too far.
Being part of the recovery of Nun cho ga, the baby woolly mammoth found in the permafrost in the Klondike this week (on Solstice and Indigenous Peoples' Day!), was the most exciting scientific thing I have ever been part of, bar none. https://t.co/WnGoSo8hPk pic.twitter.com/JLD0isNk8Y
— Prof Dan Shugar (@WaterSHEDLab) June 24, 2022
The most exciting scientific thing I have ever been a part of was the discovery of the woolly mammoth.
He said that the mammoth's toenails, hide, hair, trunk, and even intestines were all intact.
The store of ice age fossils in Whitehorse is renowned, but rarely are such well-preserved finds found. It has been a lifelong dream of Zazula's to meet a real woolly mammoth.
Today was the day that it came true. Nun cho ga is one of the most amazing mummified ice age animals ever found.
Early humans hunted and used the mammoth bones and tusks for art and tools. Climate change or hunting may have caused them to go extinct.
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