Undercovered: Eight-Year-Old Paleontologist Unearths Fossil From Ice Age

Welcome to Undercovered: our daily feature bringing attention to stories we feel deserve a larger audience.

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Another light-hearted one to close out the week.

Emma Persico, a eight-year-old Italian girl, found a petrified leg bone of a woolly mammoth in a field in Northern Italy, according to Corriere della Sera and BBC.

Persico’s father, Prof. Davide Persico actually is a paleontologist at the University of Parma. “It shows she has learned the first tricks of the trade,” he told Corriere della Sera.

Per the BBC:

Mammoths last roamed the region at least 12,000 years ago and finding a bone there is rare, the paper notes, making it a dream find for the youngster. Another Italian paper declared she was “better than Indiana Jones”.

Mr Persico used photos from a natural history museum in the Netherlands to confirm the identification – joking that if he wasn’t certain then he’d better find a new job – and says it’s a tibia from a young woolly mammoth. The bone is now in a local museum, and will be put on display alongside a plaque with Emma’s name on it.

[image via Wikicommons]

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Undercovered is a new daily feature from Mediaite, bringing attention to stories that warrant more attention — or, in this case, just make us smile. Go through the Undercovered archives here.

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