The Russian boy found 30,000 years old mammoth

An 11-year-old boy in northern Russia accidentally discovered a 'mammoth of the century' , preserved in the best snowpack among the findings from 1901 to the present.

The boy, Yevgeny Salinder, lives with his family near a polar station on the Taimyr peninsula, northern Russia. The boy found this frozen animal while walking along the banks of the Yenisei River in late August.

It took scientists five days to unearth the mammoth.

'The boy smelled an unpleasant smell and saw something rising from the ground. That is the heel of the mammoth , 'said Alexei Tikhonov, director of the Museum of Zoology in Saint Petersburg. The director rushed to the place after the boy's family informed the scientists about this historical discovery.

According to Tikhonov the mammoth died at age 15-16, from about 30,000 years ago. And ivory, skin, one eye, one ear can see it clearly.

'Its 1 meter long penis is also intact so we can conclude that this is a male mammoth' , he said.

According to Tikhonov, this is the best preserved adult mammoth ever discovered in over 100 years.'So far we can say that this is the mammoth of the century,' Tikhonov said.

It took the scientists five days to excavate the mammoth and then transfer it to the city of Dudinka in the north.