Woolly Mammoth Skeleton Unearthed Near Paris
Posted on Thursday, November 08, 2012

The remains of a woolly mammoth that lived between 200,000 and 500,000 years ago have been found near Paris.

Nicknamed Helmut, the skeleton was discovered by accident during the excavation of an ancient Roman site along the Changis-sur-Marne riverbank, 30 miles east of the French capital.

The remains - which are in a near perfect condition - include four connected vertebrae, jaw bones and a complete pelvis.

Researchers at the National Institute for Preventive Archaeological Research said the creature would have been in its 20s when it died.

It may be only the third such specimen of a long-haired woolly mammoth unearthed in France in the last 150 years. Such discoveries are more common in Siberia.

Archaeologists will try to establish the circumstances of the animal's death.

Current theories are that it could have drowned in the River Marne or been hunted by Neanderthal man.

It was a French scientist, Georges Cuvier, who first identified the woolly mammoth in 1796.

Mammoth Task: Plan To Clone Ice Age Beast

South Korean and Russian scientists have vowed to work together in an attempt to clone a woolly mammoth from remains found in Siberia.

The giant Ice Age animal last roamed the Earth some 10,000 years ago - but experts believe it is possible to bring it back to life.

Vasily Vasiliev, from Russia's North Eastern Federal University of the Sakha Republic, and Hwang Woo-Suk of South Korea's Sooam Biotech Research Foundation have agreed to join forces to research the mammoth task.

The new pact comes after scientists resurrected an ancient flower from fruit and seeds hidden in an Ice Age squirrel's burrow in permafrost.

The researchers said their results proved that permafrost serves as a natural depository for ancient life forms.

Experts in South Korea and Russia now plan to take DNA from the remains of a woolly mammoth uncovered by the thawing Siberian permaforst.

They plan to insert it into the egg cell of an Indian elephant to hopefully produce an embryo, which will then be placed into the womb of an elephant for gestation.

"The first and hardest mission is to restore mammoth cells," Sooam researcher Hwang In-Sung said.

"This will be a really tough job, but we believe it is possible because our institute is good at cloning animals."

South Korean scientists have previously cloned animals including a cow, a cat, dogs, a pig and a wolf.

However, Sooam's leading clone researcher, Hwang Woo-Suk is controversial figure in South Korea.

In 2005 he created Snuppy, the world's first cloned dog, and last October he reportedly cloned the endangered American coyote.

But his 2004 research into the creation of human stem cells from a cloned embryo was recently found to have been faked.