Lyuba the Baby Mammoth Will Come Back Home in November

21.05.2009 — News

YaNAO.

In November 2009, the international celebrity will show up in Salekhard - Lyuba the Baby Mammoth, found two years ago in the Yamal Peninsula. Within the next few months its carcass will be undergoing special treatment in the Zoological Museum in Saint-Petersburg.

Japanese scientists established that the little mammoth lived on the today's territory of Yamal 37 thousand years ago. Over a five-month life span she gained 50 kilograms of body-weight. Thanks to permafrost the body is very well-preserved. Lyuba's trunk and eyes, the most vulnerable parts of fossil mammoths, are intact. She is the fifth baby mammoth found over the whole history of mammoth studies in the world. Two of them were found in Yamal.

As RusBusinessNews learned from the Zoological Museum representatives, initially the body was to be frozen. However, plastination (drying up) was chosen as the least-damaging method. Having obtained the approval from the Ministry of Culture of the Russian Federation, the museum experts will start the treatment procedure that will take about a month.

When moved back from Saint Petersburg, Lyuba will become an exhibit at the I. Shemanovskiy museum and exhibition centre in Salekhard. The exhibition already features a warrior mummy that lay in permafrost for over 1,500 years. The Yamal authorities are sure that the baby mammoth will attract more tourists from different countries.