Siberian Mammoth's Blood Preserved in Near-Perfect Frozen Carcass, Korean Scientist Wants to Clone the Material [PHOTOS]

Russian scientists unearthed an adult female mammoth so-well preserved that muscle tissue is still remaining in the carcass and some of the creature's blood is perfectly preserved in the ice around it. It is being called the best-preserved mammoth in the history of paleontology.

The Siberian mammoth was discovered frozen during an excavation on Novosibirsk Islands, located in the frigid seas of northeastern Russia, where the temperatures were 14 degrees Fahrenheit (-10 C).

"We were really surprised to find mammoth blood and muscle tissue," said Semyon Grigoriev, head of the Museum of Mammoths of the Institute of Applied Ecology of the North at the North Eastern Federal University, according to the Siberian Times.

"It is the first time we managed to obtain mammoth blood. No-one has ever seen before how the mammoth's blood flows."

Grigoriev said the 10,000-year-old mammoth was so well-preserved because the freezing temperatures were consistent between the mammoth's death and now; there was no period of defrost and refreeze, which would have certainly had an effect on the specimen. The mammoth may have been as old as 60 at the time of its death.  

Conditions at the time of the mammoth's death were apparently harsh, and the creature met a grim end.

"We suppose that the mammoth fell into water or got bogged down in a swamp, could not free herself and died. Due to this fact the lower part of the body, including the lower jaw, and tongue tissue, was preserved very well," Grigoriev said.

"The upper torso and two legs, which were in the soil, were gnawed by prehistoric and modern predators and almost did not survive."

Despite the mammoth's less-than-complete condition, Grigoriev called the find "the best preserved mammoth in the history of paleontology." In all, Russia Today reported, only two other adult mammoth carcasses have ever been found.

In a move likely to cause rancorous debate, a South Korean bioengineering firm is reportedly in a partnership with the team that found the mammoth and is developing a way to clone the mammoth DNA and bring the extinct creature back to life.

The Siberian Times named the infamous Hwang Woo-suk in connection with the cloning operation, which will reportedly transplant eggs embedded the mammoth's genetic material into a live elephant for a 22-month gestation period.

Hwang fell from grace after fabricating the research in a series of experiments that were published in a number of top-tier scientific journals and allegedly obtained the human eggs used in his cloning research in unacceptable ways.

Mammoths are believed to have died off about 4,000 years ago, though the cause of extinction is disputed.

Photos of the mammoth and its blood are published here.