Boy discovers 30,000-year-old mammoth

New research suggests woolly mammoths became extinct because of climate change, not hunting by humans (Getty Images)

An 11 year-old Russian boy made one of the discoveries of the century when he stumbled across the remains of a 30,000-year-old woolly mammoth, the New Scientist reports.

"Woolly mammoths have been found in the permafrost in Siberia since at least 1929, but this is one of the best preserved. Its tusks, mouth and rib cage are clearly visible."

Scientists uncovered the beast using steam and pickaxes and it will now be studied by paleontologists in Moscow and St Petersburg, before being put on permanent display in Taymyr Natural History Museum.

"It seems inevitable with such a discovery that the possibility of cloning a mammoth will be revived. A team of Japanese scientists are apparently working with DNA from a carcass in a Russian laboratory to produce a clone. A big obstacle, of course, is degraded, ice-damaged DNA."