A beautiful Mammoth fossil discovered in Serbia

An almost complete and beautifully preserved fossil of the Southern Mammoth, Mammuthus meridionalis was discovered a couple of weeks ago by a team of archaeologists led by Miomir KoraÄ from the Archaeological Institute Belgrade and the Director of the Archaeological park Viminacium in Eastern Serbia.

The fossil, pretty much articulated and all in one place, was discovered at a depth of 27 meters (about 88.5 feet) in sand, which indicates that this area did not experience a serious earthquake for at least a million years or more since the animal died. It was identified as a female. She was about 4.5 meters tall, about 6 meters long, and weighed about 10 tons.

Southern Mammoth is one of the oldest and one of the largest species of mammoths. It is thought to have migrated from Africa into Europe between 1 and 2 million years ago. It was hairy, but not nearly as much as the later Woolly Mammoth, and thus not as adapted for the cold climate of the Ice Ages.

It will probably take only a couple of months to clean up the fossil, analyze it and articulate the skeleton, as it is so well preserved in sand. It will be displayed near the site of discovery, i.e., it will not be shipped to a bigger museum elsewhere.

I will be visiting Belgrade next month for a few days and I am trying to figure out if I could go to Kostolac, see (and photograph) the fossil and interview the researchers. I will let you know how that turns out.