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WORKERS digging on the underground network in the
western city of Duesseldorf have uncovered a 34 kilogram woolly mammoth
tusk more than 10,000 years old, city officials said on Tuesday.
Excavation work was stopped immediately while the 1.20-metre long tusk
was gently removed and taken away for scientific study, Duesseldorf
authorities said in a statement.
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The tusk was the only part of the animal found during the dig some 12
metres below the surface.
Woolly mammoths died out in the region around present-day Germany some
10,000 years ago.
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The woolly mammoth (Mammuthus primigenius), also called the tundra
mammoth, was a species of mammoth.
This animal is known from bones and frozen carcasses from northern North
America and northern Eurasia with the best preserved carcasses in
Siberia. They are perhaps the most well known species of mammoth.
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This mammoth species was first recorded in (possibly 150,000 years old)
deposits of the second last glaciation in Eurasia. It was derived from
the steppe mammoth (Mammuthus trogonotherii).
It disappeared from most of its range at the end of the Pleistocene
(10,000 years ago), with an isolated population still living on Wrangel
Island until roughly 1700 BC.
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