Moldova

Moldova: Fragments of mammoth skeleton revealed on lake bottom

June 19, 2009

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The Moldovan archeologists have recently found, on the bottom of Valea Morilor lake from Chisinau, fragments of a mammoth. The discovery happened after a few months ago, the scientists found in the same region, bone extracts belonging to a prehistoric animal.

Contacted by BASA-press, Anatolie David, the head of the paleontology laboratory from the Zoology Institute, has said that the discovery was made some days ago by the archeologists of the National Museum of Archeology and History of Moldova, in the old basin of the lake not far from the former discoveries.

The skeleton odds and ends belong to a mammoth and they are to be soon taken out, dried and taken over for being exposed examined, according to the quoted source. The archeologists are realizing diggings on the bottom of the lake.

“We don't exclude the fact that Valea Morilor lake is going to bring up other surprises, too”, David said.

The discovery is an important one and rather rare for Moldova.

“We suppose the territory of Moldova was a rather attractive place for the big animals, like the mastodons that disappeared three million years ago, as well as for their followers – mammoths, which disappeared some tens of thousands years ago”, David added.

In late March, 2009, during certain excavation works, the workers found a few skeleton bones on the botton of Valea Morilor lake. As a result of the first investigations, the archeologists supposed the revealed skeleton belonged to a mastodon, a version which has not been confirmed. The scientists say that bones found belonged to a female mammoth that lived during the superior pleistocene and that found her death in the water basin in late period of the ice age, about 16-14,000 years ago, being one of the last mammoths living on the territory of Moldova.

BASA-press