The body of a 10,000 to 15,000 year old woolly mammoth was found frozen in the Arctic Ocean on an island. Fox News reported that scientists have found that the blood was so well preserved that it flowed from the body of the mammoth.
"The blood is very dark, it was found in ice cavities below the belly and when we broke these cavities with a poll pick, the blood came running out," said Semyon Grigoriev, the head of the expedition and chairman of the Mammoth Museum to Fox News.
Scientists with the Research Institute of Applied Ecology of the North, North-Eastern Federal University, and the Russian Geographical Society announced that the mammal was preserved well on Lyakhovsky Island of Novosibirsk archipelago.
"Interestingly, the temperature at the time of excavation was -7 to - 10 degrees Celsius [19.4 to 14 degrees Fahrenheit]. It may be assumed that the blood of mammoths had some cryoprotective properties," added Grigoriev to Fox News. "The fragments of muscle tissues, which we've found out of the body, have a natural red color of fresh meat. The reason for such preservation is that the lower part of the body was underlying in pure ice, and the upper part was found in the middle of tundra."
The Sydney Morning Herald reported that the team said it was the first time blood has been recovered from an ancient mammal. The team hope that blood and tissue samples will contain DNA which could be used for cloning.An illustration of a woolly mammoth. Photo: Getty Images
In March, a team that was led by University of NSW paleontologist Mike Archer said that it had grown a three day old embryo of a species that had been extinct---a gastric brooding frog. The mammoth was found and the species is believed to have died about 10,000 to 12,000 years ago.
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