A mummified woolly mammoth
was discovered by gold miners in Canada. According to the Yukon government and
Trʼondëk Hwëchʼin, a local traditional territory, a gold miner in Canada on
Tuesday found an almost fully mummified infant woolly mammoth. The female
infant was given the name Nuncho Ga, which in Hän means “large baby
animal.”

The woolly
mammoth was found to be the finest preserved fossil ever found in North
America. The creature was reportedly discovered on Tuesday by miners who were
sifting through permafrost.

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Geologists
from the University of Calgary and the Yukon Geological Survey discovered the
mammoth, which they assume perished and was frozen during the last ice age,
which ended more than 30,000 years ago. When she was alive, she presumably
travelled the Yukon with wild horses, cave lions, and giant steppe bison.

According
to the official news release, Nuncho Ga is the first almost complete and
best-preserved mummified woolly mammoth unearthed in North America. Similar
discoveries have also been made in Alaska. Alaskan authorities discovered
Effie, a second partially-grown calf, in 1948. And in 2007, Siberia reported
the discovery of Lyuba, a 42,000-year-old baby woolly mammoth mummy. According
to the news statement, Nun Cho Ga is similar in size to Lyuba.

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Woolly
mammoths inhabited North America, Asia, and Europe between around 300,000 and
10,000 years ago, according to National Geographic; some researchers believe
they vanished as recently as 4,000 years ago. Although data from 2021 reveals
otherwise, it has long been believed that humans are to blame for the
extinction of this species.

“Nun Cho ga is beautiful and
one of the most incredible mummified ice age animals ever discovered.
I am excited to get to know her more.” Dr Grant Zazula, a
paleontologist in Yukon stated, “As an ice age palaeontologist, it
has been one of my lifelong dreams to come face to face with a real woolly
mammoth. That dream came true today,”