A group of students have discovered the remains of a giant woolly mammoth while digging in Russia’s remote Siberian republic of Yakutia.
The students discovered the bones of the prehistoric animal while searching for charcoal to use in their creative metalwork course, RIA Novosti reported.
“One of the students was digging with a shovel when she hit something hard,” said a spokesman for Yakutia’s local education department.
“The students began digging around to see what it was and pulled out a large section of the hip bone of a big mammal.
Archaeologists and ethnographers were immediately brought to the site and confirmed that the animal bones belonged to a woolly mammoth.
Excavations of the full remains will begin in August, the spokesman said.