A baby woolly mammoth was found frozen in the permafrost of northwestern Canada.
It is the first such discovery in North America.
The ice age mummified mammoth is believed to be over 30,000 years old.
It was found by prospectors in the Klondike region of the Yukon on Tuesday (21).
According to broadcaster CBC News, a miner called his boss to examine something that had been hit by his bulldozer in the mud at Eureka Creek, south of Dawson City.
The area of ​​the find belongs to the Tr’ondek Hwech’in First Nation.
The Yukon government compared this discovery to one made in Russia, also of a baby mammoth, which lay in Siberia’s permafrost in 2007.
The government said this is “the most complete mummified mammoth found in North America” ​​and only the second to be found in the world.
It is roughly the same size as the Siberian baby, which was about 42,000 years old, the Yukon government said in a press release.
The baby, believed to be female, was named Nun cho ga, which means “big animal baby” in the Han language spoken by native peoples in the area.
“Nun cho ga is beautiful and one of the most incredible mummified ice age animals ever discovered in the world,” said paleontologist Grant Zazula.
Before Nun cho ga, partial remains of a baby mammoth were found in 1948 in a gold mine in Alaska.
