A superbly preserved baby woolly mammoth discovered by a gold digger in Canada

More than a century ago, the discovery of deposits gold deposits around the Klondike River in the Canadian Far North, more specifically in the region of yukon, located east of the border with Alaska, had triggered a rush of about 100,000 people hoping to make a quick fortune. Mining collapsed after a few years but has never stopped since then, attracting a few gold diggers still hoping to unearth the jackpot.

This is what happened in a way on June 21, 2022 to a young miner working at the Eureka Creek site, south of the City of Dawson, the city mushroom born of the gold Rushwhich was the capital of the Yukon until 1952.

Let us specify right away that it was not a question of a gold nugget of record size but that the discovery made is of quite another importance for this species of diggers of the treasures of the Earth which are the paleontologists. Indeed, the permafrost delivered a living, but deceased and mummified organism, which is nothing less than that of a baby. woolly mammoth and especially the second of its kind found complete in the world and the first in North America.

A baby mammoth that died 40,000 years ago?

Quickly notified, geologists came on site to identify the geological context of the discovery, accompanied by the chief paleontologist of the government of the Canadian province of Yukon, Grant Zazula. As the animal was found on the territory of the Tr’ondëk Hwëch’in Indian tribe and on the day honoring the First Nations, that is to say the aboriginal peoples of Canada, it was baptized Nun cho gawhich means ” big baby animal in the language of the Hän Hwëchʼin people (whose name means ” people living along the river “).

The geological layers that have preserved Nun cho ga indicate that the baby woolly mammoth lived between 35,000 and 40,000 years ago. The first examinations carried out by Grant Zazula suggest that it was a female. Nun cho ga is about 140cm which is a little longer than the other one baby mammoth almost complete woolly found in Siberia, in May 2007 and called Liouba (see the previous article below). Zazula thinks that Nun cho ga was probably between 30 and 35 days old when she died while foraging for grass as she walked through a muddy area where she quickly sank to die. Part of his intestine indeed reveals plants, which probably tells us about his last activity before his death.

The discovery of Nun cho ga will it help us to revive the mammoths woolly? We may know by 2030…

What is certain is that the Klondike has been delivering for years, in the lands of gold prospectors, more or less well preserved animal carcasses dating from the Ice Age. One might think that the discovery of Nun cho ga would have pleased yves coppens.

Very well preserved, two baby woolly mammoths reveal their secrets

Article of Laurent Sacco published on 08/01/2014

Liouba and Khroma are two baby mammoths found in the Arctic permafrost in the late 2000s. An international team of paleontologists unlocked some of their secrets using X-rays. The results of several years of study, accompanied by 30 unpublished images taken at scannerhas just been published.

The 5^e international conference on mammoths and their families which was held in September 2010 in Le Puy-en-Velay was the occasion for the arrival in France of a special guest over 40,000 years old. A baby mammoth found in October 2008 near the Khroma River in the far north of Yakutia, northern Siberia. At first it was believed to be a young male who died two months after birth, but the study of his anatomy by computed tomography using an X-ray scanner, especially in the department radiology of the hospital center Emile Rouxshowed that it was actually a female.

Khromaas it is now known, was not the only one to reveal some of the secrets of woolly mammoths using X-rays. Another baby found by breeders of reindeer in May 2007, in the Yamal Peninsula, on the banks of the Yuribei River in northwestern Siberia was examined in the same way by a US team. It was a female named Liouba, who died very young, about a month after her birth. A method of tooth growth studies determined that both mammoths were born in the spring. They belonged to two populations separated by thousands of kilometers, but which both lived 40,000 years ago.

The best-preserved baby mammoths ever found

Liouba and Khroma turned out to be the most complete and best-preserved baby mammoth specimens ever found. A report on their study using scanners was published recently, jointly by Russian, French and American teams in Journal of Paleontology.

Khroma, however, was found in worse condition than Liouba. It remained preserved in the permafrost in an upright position, so that when she was found, predators like arctic foxes had already removed parts of her trunk and her skull, along with the lump of fat that probably covered the back of his neck. The scanner found that the size of the brain of Khroma was slightly less than that of a baby elephant of the same age, suggesting the hypothesis that the time of gestation in mammoths was shorter than in elephants.

The state of conservation of the soft tissues is such that the researchers do not hesitate to speak of mummies for the two bodies. We can therefore study the muscles, connective tissue, organs and skin of woolly mammoths. We are even able to reconstruct the probable scenario of their deaths.

Mammoth milk over 40,000 years old!

In the case of Liouba, it was not even necessary to use the data provided by the industrial scanner of the Ford factory in Michigan where she was examined. Of the sediment ends blocked his trunk, his throat and his bronchi. She would therefore have died of suffocation after inhaling mud. This suggests that she must have been crossing a lake, walking on its frozen surface when the ice gave way under her weight. In support of this hypothesis, a mineral called vivianite was discovered in these sediments, which forms in cold and oxygen-poor environments such as the bottom of lakes.

In the case of Khroma, coarser sediments were also found there in his trunk and throat, but unfortunately not in his lungs, not preserved. Her spine fractured indicates a fall. We can therefore think that it was at the edge of a river and that a collapse from the bank threw her into the water. Remarkably, his stomach contained very well preserved remnants of undigested milk and having the appearance of a yogurt. His mother had to breastfeed him less than an hour before his death, according to the researchers.

In any case, Liouba and Khroma now constitute a kind of stone of Rosette which will help paleontologists decipher the remains of other woolly mammoths that can be found in the Arctic permafrost of Siberia. As one is about a month older than the other, they both give us insight into the transformations of this species as they grow.