After nearly a month of waiting, the much-anticipated arrival in Western Europe of the most complete mammoth ever found has finally arrived.
In a large black crate especially designed for the cherished baby mammoth, Lyuba, tucked in her bed of foam and white sheets of paper, safely arrived at the Natural History Museum in London after a week of being on the road.
The mammoth, which is estimated to be only a month-old when it perished approximately 42,000 years ago, was discovered in northern Russia sometime in May 2007 by a reindeer herder named Yuri Khudi. The herder and his son were looking for wood on the banks of the icy Yuribei River when they stumbled upon a carcass that they recognized belonged to an ancient mammoth. Lyuba was named after the first name of Khudi's wife, a name that meant "love" in Russian.
Lyuba's body is so well preserved that her skin and organs remained intact, and some of her mother's milk was found in her stomach. She was even deemed as better than Dima, a male mammoth calf mummy discovered in 1977 and was previously considered as the best known mummified mammoth found. Further studies about Lyuba's death led to a conclusion that she may have suffocated from the mud that bogged her down as her herd crossed a river.
Her remains will be on loan from the Shemanovsky Museum in northern Siberia to grace the British museum's exhibition titled "Mammoths: Ice Age Giants," which will run until September 7. Measuring at least 85cm tall and 13cm long or about the same size as a large dog, she will be one of the eye-catching specimens in the exhibit, along with her other giant family members.
Professor Adrian Lister, a mammoth expert at the Museum who was also one of the few that was given the opportunity to unpack Lyuba, expressed his utter admiration for the mammoth, saying that seeing the baby mammoth in flesh was already an "incredible experience" and was left to only mutter the words "She's beautiful" shortly after lifting the lid of the crate.
"It was an emotional experience to be face-to-face with a baby mammoth from the Ice Age," said Lister. "I'm so thrilled that our visitors will be able to experience that, too."
During Lyuba's stay in the Museum, scientists will take the opportunity to examine her and find out what caused their species to become extinct. So far, scientists are left with climate change and habitat destruction as two of possible reasons behind their sudden demise. These close relatives of the modern-day elephants are believed to have disappeared along the period of the last ice age, together with some megafauna.
