Mammoth fossils on display in Saskatoon

Mammoth fossils went on display in Saskatoon Tuesday. The Saskatchewan Geological Society brought the Yukon government's Paleontologist, Grant Zazula, to speak on the extinct animal.

"It's an ancient extinct relative of an Asian elephant," Zazula told CBC.

He said during most of the ice age the Yukon escaped glaciation, making it possible to find fossils from that time period.

"Thankfully enough we have this massive gold mining community in the Yukon that have been there since, you know the Klondike gold rush of 1898," he said. "As soon as they started finding gold they started finding the remains of ice age animals like woolly mammoths."

Zazula said some of the most interesting research into mammoths looks at bringing extinct animals back to life.

People would take the DNA from a mammoth in a petridish, and insert it into the genome of an elephant. He says essentially this would create a mammoth in a test tube.

"It's science fiction, man, but people are trying to do it," he said.

Zazula's talk is at 7:00 p.m. at the Delta Bessborough hotel in Saskatoon. He will show photos and also have fossils on display.