Woolly Mammoth: Secrets from the Ice Page #6

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It is like unwrapping an ancient

mummy. It is an ancient mummy!

It is an ancient mummy, sure.

The trunk. It's the trunk.

It's beautiful.

SHE GASPS:

Oh, my goodness! Oh, my goodness,

that's amazing!

Long hair, yeah.

That fur's really long.

'From its size it looks

as though this mammoth

'was about 3 or 4 years old

when it died.

'After thousands of years lying

frozen in the ground

'it's twisted and contorted.

Now lying on its back,

'it's head is flopped to one side

and its legs stick up in to the air.

'Its foot pads and thick strawberry

blonde hair

'are exquisitely preserved. '

I'm jealous.

He has much more hair than me!

Isn't it hard to believe that

this is something which died

so long ago? I mean it doesn't

look like an animal which has been

dead for thousands and thousands of

years, an animal from the Ice Age.

You can't believe that it's

more than 10,000 years old.

It looks so fresh,

it looks almost alive.

So fresh yeah, yeah, yeah.

It is beautiful.

It IS beautiful.

'This specimen is also mysterious.

'We don't yet know if it's male

or female, or when it died.

'But most mysterious of all

are the signs of human interaction.

'It has two large cuts on its back,

'through which many of its bones

have been removed,

'including its spine and skull. '

So this is very clearly

not natural processes,

this is absolutely human tampering.

The really big question is,

did this happen recently,

or did it happen in antiquity?

For me definitely it happened

a long time ago.

A long time ago, because,

can you see, the skin is dry, yeah,

mummified,

I can not see how it can be cut.

And it's not so easy to open it,

and of course,

we need to work more on this.

Yeah, and this is a wonderful,

wonderful thing.

You know, it's an amazing specimen

of a young mammoth,

and this is just the beginning,

isn't it?

Because now the investigation

will proceed,

and we will find out as much as

we possibly can

about the life and the death

of this animal,

and the way that humans

interacted with it.

Yes, this is exciting,

this is very, very exciting.

It's actually very difficult to

see anything with

the mammoth in this frozen state.

The scientists are going to have

to defrost it to get

to the bottom of this story.

How exciting though if they do find

out that this mammoth was

tampered with by ancient people.

'If it was interfered

with in the deep past,

'this would be an incredibly

important specimen

'showing interaction between ancient

humans and woolly mammoths.

'People usually kill

animals for food.

'But this specimen hasn't

been butchered,

'and although now dried out,

most of the meat is untouched.

'Humans have certainly interfered

with this carcass.

'Bones have been removed

and the tusks are missing.

'But for me, the big question is

'whether that happened very recently

or in the deep past?

'The scientific investigation is

only just beginning

'it may be years before

we have the answer. '

It is so exciting,

and such a privilege,

to be here with this mammoth as

it's unwrapped,

and to have been with it

on its journey,

as it comes in from the tundra.

It's a historic moment for Yakutia,

for Siberia

and anybody that's

interested in mammoths.

'Iconic and majestic,

mammoths were once a mystery.

'Now we understand them better,

we still revere them.

'Perfectly adapted, on the inside

and out,

'they withstood the extremes

of the Arctic Ice Age,

'while few other animals could.

'Genetic and chemical analyses

are revealing

'the secrets of their lifestyles.

'Long gone from our landscape,

we're taking a step closer

'to bringing back these

incredible beasts

'using the latest techniques

in cloning.

'And this brand new discovery

may well take us a step closer

'to understanding how our own

ancestors

'could have contributed

to the extinction

'of the greatest of all ice age

titans, the woolly mammoth. '

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