Lyuba (Люба) is a female woolly mammoth calf (Mammuthus primigenius) who died ca 40,000 years ago at the age of one month. She is by far the best preserved mammoth mummy in the world, surpassing Dima, a male mammoth calf mummy which had previously been the best known specimen.
Discovered in May 2007 by reindeer breeder and hunter Yuri Khudi in Russia's Arctic Yamal Peninsula, she was named "Lyuba" (diminutive from Lyubov' (Любовь) = "Love") after the discoverer's wife. The calf weighed 50 kg (110 lb), was 85 centimeters (33.5 in.) high and measured 130 centimeters (51 in.) from trunk to tail, roughly the same size as a large dog.[1][2]
Upon finding, the calf was remarkably well-preserved; her eyes and trunk were intact and some fur remained on her body. The mammoth was transferred to Jikei University School of Medicine in Japan for further studying, including computer tomography scans. Lyuba is believed to have suffocated, from inhaling mud as she struggled while bogged down in deep mud in the bed of a river which her herd was crossing. The clay-like substance that likely suffocated her also "pickled" her, preserving the mammoth in a nearly pristine state. Her skin and organs are intact, and scientists were able to identify milk from her mother in her stomach, and fecal matter in her intestine, including evidence that, like some modern young elephants, she ate adult herd members' faeces to build up a normal intestinal flora of bacteria to help to digest plant material. While previously discovered mammoth specimens, which are less well-preserved than Lyuba, appeared to be starving, Lyuba appears very healthy. Lyuba's organs and skin are in perfect condition.[3] By examining Lyuba's teeth, researchers 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.
Cross-sections of her left milk tusk and of a premolar tooth suggests she was descended from mammoths which recolonized Siberia from Alaska (crossing via Beringia) after the original Siberian mammoths died out or were hunted out.
Lyuba, on loan from the Shemanovskiy Museum and Exhibition Center, will be showcased in an exhibition entitled "Mammoths and Mastodons: Titans of the Ice Age." This exhibition is scheduled to make stops at ten venues in North America and overseas over a four year period, having been developed at the Field Museum in Chicago. Other tour stops include Liberty Science Center in Jersey City in Fall 2010[4], Anchorage Museum, Missouri History Museum, Boston Museum of Science, Denver Museum of Nature and Science, and San Diego Natural History Museum.