Researchers in Siberia are conducting tests on a juvenile mammoth whose remarkably well-preserved remains were discovered when permafrost thawed after more than 50,000 years.

The creature, resembling a small elephant with a trunk, was found in the Batagaika crater, a huge depression more than 80 meters deep that is widening due to climate change.

The carcass, weighing more than 110 kg (240 pounds), was brought to the surface on an improvised stretcher, said Maxim Cherpasov, director of the Lazarev Mammoth Museum laboratory in the city of Yakutsk.

He said the mammoth was probably just over a year old when it died, but testing would allow scientists to confirm this more precisely. The fact that its head and trunk survived was particularly unusual.

“As a rule, the part that thaws first, especially the trunk, is often eaten by predators or modern birds. Here, for example, even though the forelimbs have already been eaten, the head is remarkably well preserved” , Cherpasov told Reuters. .

It is the latest in a series of spectacular discoveries in Russian permafrost. Last month, scientists from the same vast northeastern region – known as Sakha or Yakutia – showed the 32,000-year-old remains of a little saber-toothed kittenwhile at the start of this year a 44,000 year old wolf carcass was discovered.