Lyuba

Ljuba (Russian Люба ) is the mummy of a female woolly mammoth calf (Mammuthus primigenius ), who died at the age of about one month about 40,000 years ago. It is the most complete, previously discovered mammoth mummy in the world, surpassing Dima, the ice mummy in 1977 found a 6 ​​to 8 month-old male mammoth calf was previously considered the best preserved copy.

Discovery and Exploration

The woolly mammoth calf was discovered in May 2007 by the reindeer breeder and hunter Yuri Chudi on the upper reaches of the river Yuribei on the Russian Yamal Peninsula. River water had solved the animal from the ground and washed up on his reference. It was named " Lyuba " after the wife of the discoverer. From the Yamal Peninsula, it reached in July 2007 in the Schemanowski Museum in Salechard, the administrative center of the Yamal-Nenets autonomous district, where an international team of researchers examined the Fund.

The mammoth was taken in December 2007 at the Jikei Medical University in Tokyo, Japan to conduct further investigations, including computed tomography scans. In November 2009, the mammoth " Lyuba " came back to Salechard. From March 5, 2010 to September 6, 2010, was at the center of the exhibition Mammoths and Mastodons: Titans of the Ice Age in the Field Museum of Natural History in Chicago. A copy of " Lyuba " was shown in the exhibition " mammoths, giants of the ice age " in the Neanderthal Museum in Dusseldorf from 20 November 2010 to 1 May 2011.

Description

The mammoth calf weighs 50 kg and is 85 inches high and 130 inches long. On his body are fur remnants, trunk and eyes are still intact, even the eyelashes of the animal are still clearly visible. The toenails missing, a piece of the tail and the right ear of the animal were bitten by dogs when it was taken a short time before his transportation to Salechard from a dealer in possession. The skin, muscles and internal organs of the animal are preserved, the scientists were in his stomach milk from the mother and feces in the intestine identify, and they could prove that it, as some modern young elephants, the feces of the adult herd members ate, around his body so as to provide them with digestive bacteria that initially lacked.

Ljuba is suffocating in the mud when she was stuck in the bed of the river, the crossed their flock. At necropsy scientists found a thick layer of clay and sand in the mouth, snout and mouth of the beast. The lehmähnliche substance they probably suffocated, also caused the preservation, which provided for the preservation of mammoths. While previous mammoth finds showed signs of hunger, Ljuba was obviously fed well through breast milk. The results of an isotope study of the second and third premolar tooth showed that she was born in the spring.

Importance

Cross sections of her left milk tooth and premolar lead to the conclusion that it is derived from mammoths from Alaska, who settled from there from Siberia via Beringia after the original Siberian mammoths were extinct or extirpated by Ice Age hunters. Through further investigation of the tusks, the researchers hope to find causes for the Quaternary extinctions at the end of the last ice age.