For Sale: Prehistoric Woolly Mammoth Skeleton

Sky News; 'For Sale: Prehistoric Woolly Mammoth Skeleton', 23 September 2014

A rare woolly mammoth skeleton is being offered for sale in what could be the first auction of its kind in Britain. The specimen is expected to attract interest from museums and private collectors around the world because it is almost fully intact.[...] Rupert van Der Werff, director of Summers Place Auctions, who are selling the Mammoth, said: "The buyer could be a private individual or a museum. Nearly complete skeletons are pretty rare. This is a fabulous skeleton in pretty good condition. "All sorts of people are collectors. The most famous ones are John Travolta and Leonardo Dicaprio. It's something to really show off about." [...] It formed part of an old Eastern European collection

and was sold to a private British collector.

So, it will have an export licence then. Can we see it? "Eastern Europe" is quite a big area and many mammoth bones have come from loess and alluvial deposits, including in war-torn Ukraine. Where were these bones excavated, by whom? If they really were in an old collection, why were they not mounted before? Where have we heard "from an anonymous old east European collection" before?