Earlier this month Russian scientists found the carcass of a wooly mammoth with blood still preserved inside the body, news.discovery.com reports. The report says the well preserved carcass is that of a female mammoth and was found on an isolated island in the Arctic Ocean.
The head of the expedition, Semyon Grigoryev told phys.org that the mammoth with blood still inside the body, died around the age of 60 between 10,000 and 15,000 years ago. This is the first time an intact elderly female mammoth has been found.
What really surprised the team of scientists was the discovery that the mammoth still had blood left inside her body.
"When we broke the ice beneath her stomach, the blood flowed out," Grigoryev said. "It was very dark. This is the most astonishing case in my entire life. How is it possible for it to remain in liquid form?"
For a while scientists have been discussing the idea of possibly bringing an extinct prehistoric animal back to life. Finding a wooly mammoth with blood still in the body brings scientists closer to an attempt to clone the prehistoric beast.
"This find gives us a really good chance of finding live cells which can help us implement this project to clone a mammoth," Grigoryev said.
Scientists have already cloned animals like dogs, cats, sheep, horses and cows. However, some cloned animals die prematurely as a result of the effects of cloning.
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