Oil workers accidentally discover mammoth remains in Siberia
When workers from Russia's Rosneft oil company set out on a land reclamation project, they had no idea they would stumble on an important discovery. The workers unearthed the tusks of a female woolly mammoth during the project, near the city of Nyagan in western Siberia.
When the first tusk emerged in an excavator bucket, the workers began digging with hand shovels. They found the second tusk as well as tibia, ribs, and teeth, and jaw fragments from the animal.
Rosneft called the Khanty-Mansiysk Museum of Nature and Man to assess the find, and museum paleontologists confirmed the remains are at least 10,000 years old. They believe the mammoth was 30-40 years old when it died.
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The museum will clean the tusk and bones, and experts will use radiocarbon dating to determine the remains' exact age. The experts also hope to determine whether the mammoth was part of the European or North American subspecies.
