A group of paleontologists from the University of Oviedo has found in an Asturian site the fossil remains of a one-year-old mammoth that inhabited the Earth about 35,000 years ago . This “small” baby Mammuthus , which weighed about 3 tons, would have been trapped in the Cave of Jou Puerta due to the detachment of its roof. It is not the only Herculean animal that succumbed to this natural trap, since in the same place traces of a giant deer and one of the largest woolly rhinos found in the world have been found.
The Jou Puerta site, discovered during the construction of the Cantabrian Highway in 2011, houses more than a thousand remains of 34 animals of ten different species , which are also in perfect condition. A sinkhole or depression in the terrain that communicated with deep cavities would have been the culprit that all this prehistoric fauna fell and was confined without escape. In addition to the fossil remains of the mammoth, the scientists found a woolly rhinoceros humerus of extraordinary size and robustness (like the one shown in the illustration), which places it among the largest specimens identified to date, and the massive antler of a megaloceros, the largest giant deer that has ever existed in history.
“Much of the remains that we have recovered correspond to juvenile individuals, less experienced and unaware of the dangers of the terrain , as is the case of the two woolly rhinos between six and seven years old and a small leopard, all still with milk teeth. them ”, the paleontologist Álvarez Lao pointed out to the scientific news agency SINC.
The fossils found have provided very valuable information to the researchers, such as that herbivores were more likely than carnivores to suffer accidents due to poor spatial vision and that species from glacial and temperate climates coexisted in the Vidiago area ( Asturias).
Illustration: Diego Álvarez Lao.
