Travis Mudry, a miner working in Canada's Yukon territory's Klondike goldfields, hacked into a wall of permafrost, or permanently frozen earth, on a rainy June morning. The thick mixture of ice soil must be removed by miners, a technique known as placer mining, in order to access the gold resources buried in the stream beds.

A sizable piece of the frozen ground suddenly broke off the wall. Strangely, the remains of a dark, shiny animal with short legs poked out from the sludge. Mudry started examining the animal, noticing its skin, fur, and stub of a tail, suspecting he had discovered a mummified newborn buffalo. After that, he saw a trunk.

Brian McCaughan, the general manager and chief operating officer of the privately held gold mining company Treadstone Equipment, was Mudry's boss. McCaughan immediately gave the order to halt all work after taking one glance at the tiny animal, which was in such good condition it appeared as though it had just passed away. He started contacting experts after taking some pictures of the discovery.

The Yukon government's paleontologist, Grant Zazula, received an email containing a picture of the frozen woolly mammoth, the most complete specimen discovered in North America to date, a half-hour later. She is stunning and one of the most amazing mummified Ice Age creatures ever found, according to Zazula.

There was only one issue: June 21 was National Indigenous Peoples Day, a Yukon government holiday. Zazula was in Whitehorse, some six hours south of Dawson City from the location of the finding in Eureka Creek. (The Tr'ondk Hwch'in, a Yukon First Nation whose presence in the area dates back thousands of years, have the goldfields in their traditional territory.)

Zazula sought the help of two geologists, one from the Yukon Geological Survey and the other from the University of Calgary, to recover the mammoth. Less than an hour before a storm hit, they hurried to the creek, inspecting the scene and removing the bones.

According to Zazula, CBC News, "[I]f she wasn't recovered at that time, she would have been lost in the storm."

After being safely enclosed, the mammoth was transported to a nearby place for a ceremony involving researchers, miners, officials, and Tr'ondk Hwch'in elders. The elders blessed the mammoth and gave it the name Nun cho ga, which translates to "big baby animal" in the Hän language.

Zazula says that Nun cho ga is a female who was probably around a month old when she passed away more than 30,000 years ago based on a cursory study. The geology of the area where the mammoth was discovered suggests that she was likely grazing over the treeless grassland when she wandered off and became enmeshed in the mud.

Nun cho ga's short demise and the particular setting of her death account for her state of preservation. Only the fossilized bones of Ice Age species are still present in the majority of the earth. However, in the Yukon, permafrost serves as a freezer, protecting sensitive data like DNA as well as soft tissue like muscle, skin, and hair. A wolf pup, a caribou calf, a gigantic camel, and other long-deceased creatures' well-preserved remains have recently been discovered in the area by miners and researchers. Nun Cho Ga will now join them as the first fully developed infant woolly mammoth discovered in North America and the second in the entire planet.

The Yukon and Klondike Rivers meet near the Yukon's geographic center in Dawson City. The rough peaks of Tombstone Territorial Park (in the Hän language, ddhäl ch'èl cha nän, or "ragged mountain land,") are to the north. Rolling permafrost formations with rivers and creeks running through them may be seen to the south. A lush boreal forest of white spruce, lodgepole pine, quaking aspen, and willow spreads across it all.

Nun cho ga was born into a very different environment. Her native land was dry and bitterly cold. Massive glaciers covered the majority of Canada during the Wisconsin glaciation period, which lasted between 100,000 and 75,000 years ago and terminated around 11,000 years ago. However, the interior of the Yukon and Alaska's coastal mountains prevented all precipitation, resulting in areas of land that were too dry to produce glaciers.

Instead, the area developed into an Ice Age animal haven in the north. Fossilized remains reveal that, in addition to camels, rhinos, and ancient wolves, the treeless region formerly was home to huge woolly mammoths, steppe bison, giant beavers, and Yukon horses. Sea levels fell by as much as 395 feet as a result of the expansion of glaciers during the Ice Age. The ancient landmass known as Beringia was formed when the Bering Land Bridge, which connected Asia and North America, was exposed as a result of this drop.

Wild grasses and forbs, which are small, nutrient-rich plants that include fragile tundra flowers like poppies and buttercups, covered large areas of Beringia. Nun cho ga would have been smaller than the Columbian mammoth, her southern counterpart, if she had reached adulthood. A lot of her time (up to 20 hours per day, according to estimates by the Yukon Beringia Interpretive Centre in Whitehorse) would have been spent grazing her way across the steppe, consuming as much as 440 pounds of grass and flowers daily. She would have also had cold-weather adaptations like smaller ears and a furrier body.

A well-known scientific idea states that Indigenous peoples crossed the Bering Land Bridge and started dispersing over North America once Nun cho ga was covered by permafrost, maybe approximately 15,000 years ago. According to Trondk Hwchin creation myths, the First Nation has always resided in the Yukon. In any case, the Trondk Hwchin's little, transient fishing community was thriving in what is now Dawson City by the middle of the 19th century.

Three Indigenous people and one white prospector came together in August 1896 to find gold in Rabbit Creek, a Klondike River tributary. Following this, 30,000 people quickly flooded the area, starting the Klondike Gold Rush.

Of these miners, only 4,000 or so really found gold. The bones of enormous, mythological beasts were a different kind of treasure that some people discovered. Scientists from the Paris Natural History Museum traveled to the Klondike in 1904 to gather the enigmatic fossils. International teams from the Canadian Museum of Nature, the Smithsonian Institution, the American Museum of Natural History, and the United States Biological Survey came after them.

With the scientists' arrival, a special partnership between gold miners and paleontologists was created and is still going strong today. Government paleontologists are frequently present at the site collecting fossils as placer miners utilize heavy machinery and hydraulic water cannons to remove permafrost and uncover gold. Each summer, Zazula and his coworkers gather 6,000–8,000 bones. A 7-week-old female wolf pup named Zhùr and a horse bone from 700,000 years ago that contained the oldest DNA ever sequenced are among their most important discoveries.

Nun Cho Ga stands out even among these uncommon discoveries. Zazula claims she is "perfect" and "beautiful," measuring just over four and a half feet from the tip of her tail to the base of her trunk.

She has a trunk, he continues. Her tail is present. Her ears are really little. She might use the small prehensile end of her trunk to grasp some grass. The newborn mammoth might be in better shape than Lyuba, a calf discovered in Siberia in 2017.

Nun cho ga is assisting in the reconstruction of a more full image of the Ice Age Yukon while also assisting in the reconciliation between the Trondk Hwch'in, the traditional landowners, and the miners and researchers who have long claimed ownership of the region's riches.

In the statement, Trondk Hwchin Chief Roberta Joseph says, "This is... a remarkable recovery for our First Nation, and we look forward to collaborating with the Yukon government on the next steps in the process for moving forward with these remains in a way that honors our traditions, culture, and laws." "We are grateful for the elders' guidance and the name they have given us thus far. Nun cho ga has decided to unveil herself to us all at this time, and we are committed to treating her with respect."

Nun cho ga's next moves have not yet been determined. If she follows Zhùr's example, she will be reverently researched and treated as something much more valuable than a specimen for scientific study. The effort will continue to be directed by Trondk Hwchin elders as the scientific community seeks to understand more about Nun cho ga and the period she lived in.

Elder Peggy Kormendy said in the statement, "It's great. When they took the tarp off, it stopped me in my tracks. All of us need to respect it. We will heal when it occurs, and it will be powerful."