Star Metro - Mammoth bones found on parched bed of Danube in Bulgaria

The bone fragments found near the northeastern city of Ruse "very likely" belonged to a woolly mammoth that lived during the Ice Age, said Nikolay Nenov, director of the Regional Historical Museum.

Specialists have so far identified a jaw bone, fragments of tusks, part of a shoulder blade and a femur with its articular head among the stash, Nenov said.

The animal is thought to have been young and the dark colour of the bones may indicate that it spent a lot of time in a marshy environment, he added.

The bones are an important discovery because they are well preserved and "unlike many previous discoveries... were concentrated in the same place", indicating that they all belonged to the same animal, Nenov said.

Woolly mammoths co-existed with early humans who hunted the cold-resistant herbivores for food and used their tusks and bones as tools.

The animals died out about 4,000 years ago. For decades, scientists have been recovering bits and pieces of mammoth tusks, bones, teeth and hair.

The remains in Bulgaria were spotted by chance on Wednesday by a resident of the village of Ryahovo in the Ruse region, before being collected on Thursday by experts from the museum.

The Danube -- which runs from the Black Forest mountains of western Germany through 10 countries to the Black Sea -- has dropped to record low levels in parts due to prolonged rain shortages and successive heatwaves since May.

Specialists are now planning a new search of the area in the hope of finding other remains, Nenov said.

M.Johnson--SMC