Its tail is lopsided. Close up, it looks suspiciously like a small, and unremarkable, Asian elephant.
But scientists were on Tuesday hailing the sensational discovery of a perfectly preserved baby woolly mammoth, which died around 10,000 years ago, and was found in the frozen tundra of northern Russia.
Experts said the six-month-old female calf was a rare complete specimen. The animal's trunk and eyes are intact. It even has fur.
A reindeer herder, Yuri Khudi, stumbled across the carcass in May near the Yuribei river in Russia's Yamal-Nenents autonomous district, in a virtually inaccessible part of north-western Siberia.
Extinct woolly mammoths -- and giant tusks -- have turned up in Siberia for centuries. But it is unusual for a complete example to be recovered.
The last major find was in 1997 when a family in the neighboring Taymyr Peninsula came across a tusk attached to what turned out to be a 20,380-year-old mammoth carcass.
The latest 130cm tall, 50kg Siberian specimen appears to have died just as the species was heading for extinction during the last ice age.
It is being sent to Japan for further tests.
"The mammoth has no defects except that its tail was a bit off," Alexei Tikhonov, one of group of international experts who examined the mammoth last week in the Arctic town of Salekhard.
"In terms of its state of pre-servation, this is the world's most valuable discovery," he said.
Global warming has made it easier for woolly mammoth hunters to hack the animal out of Russia's thawing permafrost An entire mammoth industry has sprung up around the far eastern frontier town of Yakutsk.
Many examples are simply sold on the black market -- and can be seen in Russian souvenir shops, next to unhappy-looking stuffed brown bears.
Mammoths first appeared around 4.8 million years ago. Most of them died out 12,000 years ago at the end of the Pleistocene era.
Auschwitz survivor Eva Schloss, the stepsister of teenage diarist Anne Frank and a tireless educator about the horrors of the Holocaust, has died. She was 96. The Anne Frank Trust UK, of which Schloss was honorary president, said she died on Saturday in London, where she lived. Britain’s King Charles III said he was “privileged and proud” to have known Schloss, who cofounded the charitable trust to help young people challenge prejudice. “The horrors that she endured as a young woman are impossible to comprehend and yet she devoted the rest of her life to overcoming hatred and prejudice, promoting kindness, courage, understanding
US President Donald Trump on Friday said Washington was “locked and loaded” to respond if Iran killed protesters, prompting Tehran to warn that intervention would destabilize the region. Protesters and security forces on Thursday clashed in several Iranian cities, with six people reported killed, the first deaths since the unrest escalated. Shopkeepers in Tehran on Sunday last week went on strike over high prices and economic stagnation, actions that have since spread into a protest movement that has swept into other parts of the country. If Iran “violently kills peaceful protesters, which is their custom, the United States of America will come to
‘DISRESPECTFUL’: Katie Miller, the wife of Trump’s most influential adviser, drew ire by posting an image of Greenland in the colors of the US flag, captioning it ‘SOON’ US President Donald Trump on Sunday doubled down on his claim that Greenland should become part of the US, despite calls by the Danish prime minister to stop “threatening” the territory. Washington’s military intervention in Venezuela has reignited fears for Greenland, which Trump has repeatedly said he wants to annex, given its strategic location in the arctic. While aboard Air Force One en route to Washington, Trump reiterated the goal. “We need Greenland from the standpoint of national security, and Denmark is not going to be able to do it,” he said in response to a reporter’s question. “We’ll worry about Greenland in
PERILOUS JOURNEY: Over just a matter of days last month, about 1,600 Afghans who were at risk of perishing due to the cold weather were rescued in the mountains Habibullah set off from his home in western Afghanistan determined to find work in Iran, only for the 15-year-old to freeze to death while walking across the mountainous frontier. “He was forced to go, to bring food for the family,” his mother, Mah Jan, said at her mud home in Ghunjan village. “We have no food to eat, we have no clothes to wear. The house in which I live has no electricity, no water. I have no proper window, nothing to burn for heating,” she added, clutching a photograph of her son. Habibullah was one of at least 18 migrants who died