'She's perfect and she's beautiful': Frozen baby woolly mammoth discovered in Yukon gold fields

A perfect storm of events has led to a once-in-a-lifetime discovery for a gold miner, a First Nation, a veteran paleontologist and a territory.

"I don't know how to process it all right now, to be honest with you. It's amazing," said Dr. Grant Zazula, the Yukon government's paleontologist.

A little after noon on June 21, National Indigenous People's Day, a young miner working in Yukon's Eureka Creek, south of Dawson City, was digging up muck using a front end loader when he struck something.

He stopped and called his boss who went to see him right away.

When he arrived, Treadstone Mining's Brian McCaughan put a stop to the operation on the spot.

Within half an hour, Zazula received a picture of the discovery.

According to Zazula, the miner had made the "most important discovery in paleontology in North America."

It was a whole baby woolly mammoth, only the second one ever found in the world, and the first in North America.

"She has a trunk. She has a tail. She has tiny little ears. She has the little prehensile end of the trunk where she could use it to grab grass," said Zazula.

"She's perfect and she's beautiful."

The paleontologist started studying the ice age in the Yukon in 1999.

"And this has been something that I've always dreamed of, to see one face to face. This week, that dream really came true."

For the Trʼondëk Hwëchʼin, on whose land the baby woolly mammoth was found, the discovery was just as important and just as exciting.

"We're all quite excited including the elders and a lot of the staff and members," said Debbie Nagano, the Trʼondëk Hwëchʼin government's director of heritage.