ST.PETERSBURG, April 21 (RIA Novosti) – The carcass of a male mammoth unearthed in Siberia this summer has been sent to the Zoological Institute of the Russian Academy of Sciences in St. Petersburg for tests, a deputy director of the institute said on Sunday.
“The plane with the mammoth will land in St. Petersburg at 11.00 local time [07.00 GMT] on Monday. The institute will carry out tests during the year,” Alexei Tikhonov said adding that the visitors of the Zoological museum will not be able to see the mammoth.
The mammoth from the 28th millennium B.C. was discovered in Russia’s northernmost peninsula of Taymyr last August. Scientists believe it is the second best-preserved mammoth found in more than a century.
The creature was nicknamed Zhenya, after Yevgeny Salinder, the 11-year-old local boy who found it when strolling near a meteorological station. Its official name is the Sopkarginsky mammoth.
The part of the carcass preserved in ice weighed about 500 kilograms. It came complete with part of the hide, plenty of flesh, an ear, a tusk, a handful of bones, and penis and testicles. The mammoth was 15 or 16 years old at the time of death, which makes it pretty young, given mammoths’ average life expectancy of 60 to 80 years.
