Remains of mammoth unearthed at Warsaw metro building site
The bones of a prehistoric mammal have been found at the site of the future Płocka metro station in Warsaw's western Wola district. Initial estimates put their age at between 100,000 and 120,000 years, the Warsaw Metro's press office announced on Monday.
Workers came across the pelvic bone and skeletal fragments six metres underground during work on the metro station's ventilation system. Shortly after, staff of the State Archaeological Museum appeared at the scene, who are supervising construction of that stretch of the new line. Building work has been halted while the find is extracted and artefacts (such as flint tools) are sought.
"The discovered remains have been retrieved and cleaned by us," explained Wojciech Brzeziński, director of the State Archaeological Museum in Warsaw. "They will be the subject of further research to establish the exact species of animal, its chronology and the circumstances of its death."
Initial information indicates that the bones might have belonged to a mammoth or a prehistoric forest elephant, which lived on the territory of present-day Poland during the Pleistocene Epoch (often known as the ice age). It measured as much as 4.5 metres in height and weighed about seven tonnes.
In those days, there used to be a lake in the region of the Wola building site. "It cannot be ruled out that this specimen entered the lake when it was frozen, the ice then broke and it ended its life there," Brzeziński postulated. (PAP)
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