Researchers
in southern Russia have unearthed remains of a rare mammoth species. Citing
local villagers’ accounts of previous bone finds, they suspect that an entire
graveyard of prehistoric creatures is waiting to be found at the site.
The
bones were found encased in clay near a river confluence close to the village
of Verkhny Kurp in the Kabardino-Balkarian Republic of the Caucasus Mountains.
They likely belonged to the southern mammoth (mammuthus meridionalis), a
species that lived in Europe and Central Asia between 2.6 and 0.7 million years
ago.
The
archeological find was made after a river bank collapsed, researcher Viktor
Kotlyarov, who studied the remains, told RT. One of the unearthed tusks remains
intact thanks to its clay encasing. A meter-long fragment of another one was
dragged down, exposed and quickly reduced to pieces before it could be
preserved, although scientists had time to take pictures.
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