Wednesday, May 2, 2012

42,000-year-old mammoth baby


Photo by TYRONE SIU/REUTERS
Lyuba, the 1-month old baby mammoth of the Ice Age, died 42,000 years ago and was preserved in the ice. She was found by a reindeer herder in Siberia in 2007. By far, she is the best preserved mammoth mummy in the world. Although her fur and toenails have disintegrated, her skin and internal organs are intact. Apparently, there were traces of her mother’s milk in her stomach. Scientists hope to gain insight into what caused Ice Age mammals, including the mammoths, to become extinct at the end of the Pleistocene era around 10,000 years ago.

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