No.6719[Reply]
The North-Eastern Federal University (NEFU) received a horn of a woolly rhinoceros, which, together with a mummified carcass, was found by university partners at a mining site in the Oymyakonsky district in Russia's northern province of Yakutia. This was reported on Monday in the press service of the university.
In Russia, Yakutia province, a significant part of all known unique finds of mammoths, woolly rhinos, bison, musk oxen, cave lions and other ancient animals in the world have been discovered.
‘We have just returned from the site of the discovery of the woolly rhino where we were handed its horn. The fragmented carcass has been preserved, and by preliminary agreement with partners, its recovery is scheduled for the autumn. This is the first such find in the recent history of the NEFU - the carcass of a woolly rhinoceros. The transferred horn is a posterior (frontal) horn. According to morphological parameters belonged to a sexually mature individual’, - the press service quotes the senior researcher - head of the laboratory of the Mammoth Museum of the NEFU Maxim Cheprasov.
According to Cheprasov, only five remains of woolly rhinos with soft tissues were found earlier in Russia, Yakutia province - Vilyuysky (1771), Verkhoyansky (1877), Kolyma (2007), Rhinoceros Sasha (2014), Abyysky (2020). ‘The new find will add to the previously unknown information about the life of this one of the brightest representative of the mammoth fauna,’ the scientist is confident.
He added that the exact biological age and sex of the animal will be established after a comprehensive study of the carcass itself. ‘Then we will also be able to obtain data on anatomo-morphological features, geological age, nutrition, genetic links with previously studied finds,’ Cheprasov explained.
Perhaps finding the mummified carcass of a woolly rhino can and will help resurrect its species by cloning, but this method is expensive.
