All news

Taimyr mammoth surprises scientists

The unique Sopkarga mammoth, better known as mammoth Gene, was found in a perfect condition a few years ago on Taimyr

MOSCOW, July 10. /TASS/. The unique Sopkarga mammoth, better known as mammoth Gene, was found in a perfect condition a few years ago on Taimyr. Nowadays, it is a key exhibit at the local history museum. Results of recent research may change the earlier scientific theories. The scientists, who studied the ancient animal, told TASS they suppose people could have come to the Arctic peninsula a few thousand years earlier, than they thought before the recent studies.

Gene and mammoth

The animal’s remains were found in 2012 not far from a local meteorology station. A school student, Gene Salinder, felt a strange smell as he walked along the Yenisei shore. He saw huge bones jutting from the soil. Before that day, he used to find fragments of mammoth bones, teeth, but on that day it was for the first time that he saw a well-preserved mammoth. He told his father, who worked at the meteorology station, about the animal, and in a week scientists from St. Petersburg were there to study the discovery.

The North’s indigenous peoples tell myths about wooly giants - they called them land deer. The local people used to think mammoths lived under the ground. Mammoth bones are usually found in the ground along rivers.

"The tundra is a great preserver, which keeps well any remains," Emiliya Stambovskaya of the Taimyr Local History Museum told TASS. "I come from the Nosok village, which is down the Yenisei, and I know well about similar discoveries - many people are bringing to the museum what they find: teeth, bones, or other paleontological fragments."

The mammoth found by the Yenisei’s mouth is exceptionally valuable. The animal, dubbed unofficially Gene after the boy, who found it, is called officially Sopkarga (name of the bay, where the animal was found). Prior to this discovery, the science knew only one sample of a grown-up mammoth which preserved well in the permafrost - the one, found in 1900 in Kolyma.

The mammoth’s mystery

The Sopkarga mammoth is a 16 year-old male. Paleontologists got from the soil the bones, skin, fragments of many organs, and the fat hump. "Scientists found on the cheekbone traces, which show the animal was hunted <…> The mammoth lived 45,000 years ago," the museum’s representative said. "We know today, that people came to Taimyr 10-12 thousand years ago; so if the recent theory is proved, then we shall know that people have come to Taimyr much earlier."

According to Krasnoyarsk’s archeologist Roman Pavlov "there are no clear proofs people in the ancient times hunted mammoths, as at those times they hunted animals, which were easier and safer to kill."

"Mammoths are animals, which are more scary than modern African elephants," he added.

However, supporters of the theory the Taimyr mammoth was killed by hunters say people could be after the animal not for the meat, but for its tusks.

No traces yet

Scientists suppose that ancient people came to Taimyr following reindeer’s migration routes. In the XX century, archeologist Leonid Khlobystin said people must have spread over Taimyr from the east. However, that area is in a huge distance from the place, where the mammoth was found.

A local geo-archeologist Danil Lysenko says it would be necessary to have further studies into Taimyr’s western areas to find whatever evidences proving people had came there much earlier, than it is believed now. The climate back then was acceptable for living there, but scientists have not found any artefacts clearly pointing to people living there.

"Honestly, nobody has been after them in fact," he continued. "I hear, in the 1970s there was a brief archeology exploration - though really brief."

Experts say there are no near plans for a big archeology expedition. Nobody can say for sure what people could have been there, whether they were hunting reindeer and decided to get a mammoth, or whether mammoths were their goals. If the theory, saying people have come to Taimyr much earlier than it is believed now, comes true, it will be a "scientific sensation," the museum’s representative told TASS.