A 30,000-year-old baby mammoth was just found.
Gold miners digging through permafrost on Eureka Creek in Canada’s Yukon uncovered something no one expected — the first near-complete, best-preserved mummified woolly mammoth ever found in North America.
Miner Travis Delawski, using an excavating machine, looked down and saw something staring back at him. Thinking it might be a buffalo or even human remains, he called his boss — until he spotted a trunk. “Brian, it’s a baby woolly mammoth,” he said.
She is approximately 30,000 years old, but was likely only around a month old when she died. Unlike fragmented fossils often unearthed, she remains nearly intact, with skin, fur, trunk, ears, and even toenails still visible.
Trʼondëk Hwëchʼin Elders named the mammoth calf “Nun Cho Ga,” which in the Hän language means “big animal baby.” The geology of where she was found indicates she was probably grazing across the treeless grassland when she strayed from her mother’s side and got stuck in the mud.
Two geologists drove out to the site at Eureka Creek and recovered the specimen just one hour before a tremendous thunderstorm swept through, in which Nun Cho Ga would likely have been lost.
The mammoth is the most complete specimen ever found in North America and only the second discovery of its kind in the world. These remarkable ice age remains provide an extremely detailed glimpse into a time when Nun Cho Ga roamed the Yukon alongside wild horses, cave lions, and giant steppe bison.
