Mammoth tusk unearthed in Belarus

Workers uncovered the tusk on 6 August. It fell from soft sediment in the quarry's sandy wall. Driver Ruslan Yevseyev was the first to spot the fossil. A 3-meter mammoth tusk discovered in the Shalygi industrial quarry of Vitebsk District likely belonged to a large adult specimen, said Denis Yurchak, the chief specialist with the Culture Department of the Vitebsk Oblast Executive Committee. Denis Yurchak explained that the glacier covering what is now Vitebsk Oblast melted 15,000-14,000 years ago, while mammoths likely migrated through the area around 20,000 years, prior to the subsequent cooling period. The tusk is being retrieved by representatives from the National History Museum.