The incredible find was about three or four years old when it died at least 20,000 years ago.
An absolute unit of a woolly rhino on display at the Weston Park Museum, Sheffield, UK. The new specimen discovered is a juvenile. Image credit: Chemical Engineer
It is the best preserved juvenile woolly rhino ever found, with a lot of its internal organs – including its hazel-colored hair, intestines, lumps of fat and tissues – kept intact for thousands of years by permafrost.
The Ice Age creature was discovered in the thawing permafrost in the Yakutia region in Russia’s extreme north in August. It is thought to be the best-preserved woolly rhino found there yet.
“The young rhino was between three and four years old and lived separately from its mother when it died, most likely by drowning,” Dr Valery Plotnikov from the Academy of Sciences of the Republic of Sakha (Yakutia), who made the first description of the find, told the Siberian Times.
Sasha the baby woolly rhino found in 2014 in Yakutia lived 34,000 years ago. Image credit: Albert Protopopov, The Siberian Times
Currently, the Ice Age relic is still in Yakutia, as ice roads have to be formed before it can be transferred to the region’s capital, Yakutsk, to be studied by scientists.
