Sweet little girl - from Canadian Broadcasting Company:
'She's perfect and she's beautiful': Frozen baby woolly mammoth discovered in Yukon gold fields
A perfect storm of events has led to a once-in-a-lifetime discovery for a gold miner, a First Nation, a veteran paleontologist and a territory.
"I don't know how to process it all right now, to be honest with you. It's amazing," said Dr. Grant Zazula, the Yukon government's paleontologist.
A little after noon on June 21, National Indigenous People's Day, a young miner working in Yukon's Eureka Creek, south of Dawson City, was digging up muck using a front end loader when he struck something.
He stopped and called his boss who went to see him right away.
When he arrived, Treadstone Mining's Brian McCaughan put a stop to the operation on the spot.
Within half an hour, Zazula received a picture of the discovery.
According to Zazula, the miner had made the "most important discovery in paleontology in North America."
It was a whole baby woolly mammoth, only the second one ever found in the world, and the first in North America.
"She has a trunk. She has a tail. She has tiny little ears. She has the little prehensile end of the trunk where she could use it to grab grass," said Zazula.
"She's perfect and she's beautiful."
Great photo - almost expect her to wake up, shake off the mud and start romping around. Probably been through a few freeze/thaw cycles so no word (yet) on the quality of the genetic material - if they are able to do somatic cell nuclear transfer. That would be very cool.
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