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Conservation of the Gusinsky mammoth skeleton: A case study
Petrova E.A., Grigoriev A.A., Dedov D.V., Tikhonov A.N.
P. 83-93
In 2019, the skeleton of a woolly mammoth Mammuthus primigenius (Blumenbach, 1799) was recovered from alluvial deposits on the Gusinaya River, Taymyr Peninsula, Russia. This find is of considerable significance for two reasons. First, the skeleton is almost complete and belonged to a relatively young individual, estimated to be 30–40 years old. Second, it is one of the few known M. primigenius skeletons dating from the terminal Late Pleistocene, with an age of 13 100–12 690 cal BP. The bones were severely weathered and consequently mechanically weak, friable and highly vulnerable once excavated. This paper describes a conservation process specifically designed to stabilise the bones while preserving them in a condition as close as possible to their original state, without reconstructing losses, fractures or other natural alterations. This approach ensures that the bones remain available for a wide range of current and future investigations, including morphological, morphometric, palaeogenomic, isotopic, radiocarbon and taphonomic studies, without obscuring natural post-mortem damage or the original state of the bones and epiphyses at the time of death.

DOI: 10.15298/rusjtheriol.25.1.09

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