A woolly mammoth found in Siberia four years ago with a perfectly shaped carcass is currently displayed in Moscow.
The baby mammoth discovered in Yakutia in a frozen ice cliff in 2010 is now displayed in Moscow. The young woolly mammoth is named Yuka and had gone displayed in Japan and Taiwan before it reached Moscow Tuesday.
Yuka is a 40,000 year old, three meters long, female woolly mammoth. She is believed to have died between the ages of six to eleven. The perfectly preserved body was found by tusk-hunters who handed it over to scientists.
Wounds found in Yuka's body suggest that both lions and humans may have been the cause of her death. Some of these wounds are the long straight cut from the prehistoric animal's head to the center of its back and an "unusual patterned opening" on the right side made of small grooves as if from a primitive saw-like tool. This might have been the works of cavemen, making it the first evidence that humans took mammoths as preys during the Ice Age.
Daniel Fisher, leading mammoth expert and University of Michigan's professor of earth and environmental sciences said, "Already there is dramatic evidence of a life-and-death struggle between Yuka and some top predator, probably a lion". "Even more interesting, there are hints that humans may have taken over the kill at an early stage," he added.
Yuka's body was preserved in an incredibly good condition with much of her soft tissue as well as its woolly ginger coat remaining intact and attached to the body.
"These are remarkably rare finds and have huge significance," said Kevin Campbell, associate professor of environmental and evolutionary physiology at the University of Manitoba. He also noted of the woolly mammoth's strawberry-blonde hair as one of the most striking things about Yuka.
Scientists can use infrared scanning to study its organs and using its body tissue they can use the latest genome technology to possibly clone the animal.
The woolly mammoth find was filmed and shown in detail on BBC/Discovery Co-Production program, "Woolly Mammoth: Secrets from the Ice."
