Miners Unearth a Mummified Woolly Rhino in Siberia, With an Intact Horn and Soft Tissue #fossils #paleontology #siberia #rhino #rhinoceros #mummified

The woolly rhino horn discovered by miners. Michil Yakovlev, NEFU press service

Smithsonian Magazine has an article about the discovery of a mummified woolly rhinoceros in Siberia.  The animal was found by gold miners earlier this summer in a quarry in the rural Oymyakonsky District of Russia.  It's very well preserved with soft tissue and a complete horn.  Some scientists have speculated that ancient DNA might even be present.

At 6 feet tall and 16 feet long, woolly rhinos were imposing plant-eaters during the Ice Age. Today, rhinos have one or two horns, depending on the species—the prehistoric rhinoceros had two, and its front horn sometimes grew more than three feet long.

Images of the remains were first posted on the messaging app Telegram on August 2, per Live Science’s Hannah Osborne.

NEFU visited the site shortly after the discovery to retrieve the rhino’s horn, and the rest of the remains are scheduled to be excavated in the fall. The woolly rhinoceros was a mature individual, though its age and sex can only be determined after more thorough study.