By Tim Binnall
A worker with a gold mining operation in Canada made a stunning discovery from the distant past when he unearthed the incredibly well-preserved remains of a baby woolly mammoth. The amazing find reportedly occurred last Tuesday afternoon as the company Treadstone Mining was in the process of excavating permafrost in the country's Yukon territory. The job came to a sudden stop, however, when a member of the crew noticed that they had stumbled upon something far more precious than gold in the form of a diminutive mummified carcass. Experts were quickly called to the scene to recover the remarkable find which is the just the second complete baby mammoth remains ever found in the world and the first in North America.
Dubbed 'Nun cho ga,' which means "big baby animal" in the native Hun language, the tiny creature is believed to have been only around a month old when it perished and likely roamed the region around 35,000 and 40,000 years ago. Reflecting on the breathtaking discovery, Yukon government paleontologist Dr. Grant Zazula indicated that "I don't know how to process it all right now, to be honest with you. It's amazing." Noting that Nun cho ga still possesses her trunk, tail,and "tiny little ears," he marveled that "she's perfect and she's beautiful." Based on a piece of grass found in the animal's intestine, researchers theorize that the baby mammoth had gotten stuck in mud while foraging for food and subsequently wound up frozen until last week.
Zazula's astonishment at the discovery was echoed by the Brian McCaughan of Treadstone Mining, who mused in a press release that "there will be one thing that stands out in a person’s entire life and I can guarantee you this is my one thing." He observed that the find and subsequent recovery was particularly fortuitous as the remains were unearthed on National Indigenous People's Day in Canada and, as such, most government offices were closed at the time. When the mining company finally managed to find a pair of geologists to come to the scene, a massive downpour erupted about an hour after their arrival, meaning that "if she wasn't recovered at that time, she would have been lost in the storm."