A bizarre mummified creature has been discovered at the heart of a diamond mine in the Sakha Republic, in northern Siberia. This ancient "monster" could date back to between 252 and 66 million years ago as it was found in sand deposits of that age.

The Siberian Times reports that the miners who found the remains had been working at the Udachnaya pipe diamond deposit, an open-pit diamond mine located just outside the Arctic Circle.

The site was discovered in 1955 and since then yielded 350 million tonnes of ore containing rough diamonds. There has also been a number of unusual discoveries such as that of a mystery red rock full of diamonds.

However, no find has been as strange as the mummified monster that has just been uncovered. The miners believed they had just stumbled upon the remains of a previously unknown species of dinosaurs.

Their theory has yet to be proved. The creature will therefore be taken for more analysis to the regional capital Yakutsk, a city 1,686km south of the Udachnaya diamond pit.

Other hypothesis about the little monster's potential origins are that it might be a wolverine, a carnivorous mammal resembling a small bear or a marten – another slender, agile mammal living in the snow forests of Siberia.

Closer analysis of the mummy's morphology, bones, and of possible DNA samples should yield more clues about its origins and give a more precise approximation of the time it lived at.