"Impeccably preserved" woolly mammoth excavated in France

The nearly complete skeleton was found with neanderthal-made spearheads among bones

Published November 8, 2012 10:23PM (EST)

     (Wikimedia)
(Wikimedia)

Archaeologists near Paris Thursday excavated a nearly complete woolly mammoth skeleton. The long-dead mammoth, named "Helmut," is considered remarkable not simply because it is "impeccably preserved" but also because neanderthal-made spearheads were discovered among the bones.

As Salon noted in October following the accidental discovery by a Russian boy of a mammoth carcass, "such discoveries fuel ongoing interest in cloning a mammoth." Scientists in South Korea, Russia and Japan are already working on mammoth cloning projects using stem cells.

The video below gives more details on this latest French discovery:


By Natasha Lennard

Natasha Lennard is an assistant news editor at Salon, covering non-electoral politics, general news and rabble-rousing. Follow her on Twitter @natashalennard, email nlennard@salon.com.

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Related Topics ------------------------------------------

Archaeology Cloning Excavation France Woolly Mammoth