Pre-Historic Find Still Frozen

March 8, 2001 -- Curious scientists have been cooped up in an underground ice cave with a wooly mammoth for a year — and there's no place they would rather be.

The researchers have been defrosting the pre-historic animal since it was airlifted out of the Siberian tundra last fall. When they first discovered the animal, encased in a 23 ton cube of ice, they thought it was one of the best preserved mammoths ever unearthed.

"My first contact with the Jarkov was a wonderful piece of hair and with a smell and with a color and with everything and now, we have find some broken pieces," said expedition leader Bernard Buigues. "I'm a little bit disappointed because I was expecting the mammoth like the toy."

Last fall scientists began using hair dryers to defrost the Jarkhov mammoth. The animal has been christened the "Jarkov" mammoth after Genady Jarkov, one of the local reindeer herders who first discovered it out on the Siberian tundra.

Defrosting and studying the animal has been a slow process. Electricity is scarce and the cave is extremely cold, limiting their work to only two consecutive hours at a time. They expect to continue the process for another three years.

You can watch the scientists at work during a Discovery Channel special, "Land of the Mammoth," this Sunday at 8 p.m. ET.