Russian scientists presented the remains of a baby woolly mammoth estimated to be 50,000 years old after the carcass emerged from thawing permafrost in Siberia. Researchers named the animal Yana after the river basin where residents found it during the summer.
Scientists described Yana as the best-preserved mammoth carcass yet discovered. The juvenile weighed more than 100 kilograms, or 15 stone 10 pounds, and measured 120 centimetres tall and 200 centimetres long. Researchers estimated that it was about one year old at death. Tests were under way to confirm when it died.
The mammoth was recovered from the Batagaika crater in the remote Yakutia region. The site is described as the world's largest permafrost crater. People living nearby noticed that the animal had almost completely thawed and built an improvised stretcher to raise the remains to the surface.
Maxim Cherpasov, head of the Lazarev Mammoth Museum Laboratory, said the timing of the discovery helped preserve the specimen. Exposed soft tissue, particularly a trunk, can be quickly eaten by present-day predators and birds once it thaws. Yana's forelimbs had already been consumed, but its head remained in unusually good condition.
Gavril Novgorodov, a researcher at the museum, said the young mammoth probably became trapped in a swamp. That setting may have helped preserve it for tens of thousands of years. The explanation was an initial scientific assessment rather than a final determination of the animal's death.
Only six comparable mammoth discoveries had previously been recorded worldwide: five in Russia and one in Canada. Yana's combination of size, age and preservation therefore offered researchers a rare juvenile specimen rather than only skeletal material. The carcass was taken to North-Eastern Federal University in Yakutsk, the regional capital, for study.
The mammoth joined other prehistoric remains recently exposed in Russia's permafrost. In November, scientists in the same region showed part of a mummified sabre-toothed cat whose estimated age was slightly less than 32,000 years. Earlier in 2024, researchers also recovered the remains of a 44,000-year-old wolf.
These discoveries occurred as long-frozen ground thawed with climate change. Thawing can reveal specimens that have remained inaccessible for millennia, while also exposing them to decay and scavengers once they reach the surface. In Yana's case, local residents' rapid recovery preserved much of the carcass for controlled study. The university's tests were expected to refine its age and help researchers evaluate the circumstances that protected the animal for about 50,000 years. Its intact head and missing forelimbs also illustrated how unevenly a carcass can survive after emerging from frozen ground.
