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Remains of 28,000-year-old woolly mammoth on display in Turkey

December 14, 2021 at 4:07 pm

A woolly mammoth skeleton on 29 March 2019 [PHILIP FONG/AFP/Getty Images]

The remains of a woolly mammoth thought to date back some 28,000 years have been put on display by a university in north-western Turkey, Anadolu News Agency reports.

The remains were unearthed in 2020 during excavations in sand and gravel quarries in the Tekirdag province, said the exhibit organisers.

At the exhibit, organised by Tekirdag Namik Kemal University, visitors can see a variety of items such as fossils, stones, rocks, metals and marble samples.

Emre Ozsahin, Head of the university’s Geography Department, said woolly mammoths – known as the ancestors of modern-day elephants – once lived in this region and also migrated nearby.

According to Ozsahin, testing of the bones shows that the mammoth lived somewhere around 23,000 to 28,000 years ago, and the available data suggests local mammoths either moved to Europe or southern regions.

He added that the region was located on the migration route of animals as well as human beings.

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