Mammuthus primigenius (baby woolly mammoth) (Late Pleistocene, 42 ka; Yamal Peninsula, Siberia, Russia) 11

Mammuthus primigenius Blumenbach, 1799 - woolly mammoth tooh from the Pleistocene of Siberia. (public exhibit signage; original photo by Adam N. Rountrey, Museum of Paleontology, University of Michigan)

This fossil tooth is from the Lyuba Mammoth, a ~42,000 year old, complete baby specimen with preserved soft parts. This individual was one month old at the time of death. CT scanning has shown that fine-grained sediments fill its airways - it choked to death after being trapped in a muddy depression.
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Exhibit info.:
Lyuba (the Russian word for "love") is the most complete mammoth specimen ever found - and the most studied by researchers. This female woolly mammoth died in Siberia about 42,000 years ago. She was about one month old at the time of her death.

Lyuba, the baby wooly mammoth, was found by Nenets people on the Yamal Peninsula in Russia. The Nenets are one of Siberia's indigenous peoples. Many still live a traditional, nomadic lifestyle as reindeer herders.

Where was Lyuba found?
In 2007, Siberian reindeer herders found Lyuba along a river bank on the Yamal Peninsula. The remote location is about 200 miles (320 kilometers) from the regional capital, Salekhard, and 1,400 miles (2,250 kilometers) from Moscow.

How is Lyuba preserved?
In a process called desiccation, Russian scientists extracted most of the water from Lyuba's body after treating her tissues with a chemical preservative called formalin. (Before this process began, researchers first extracted tissue samples from Lyuba for later study.) Lyuba's body can now be displayed in this exhibit without any refrigeration.

Where is Lyuba's fur?
For a woolly mammoth, Lyuba appears surprisingly hairless. This is because most of her hair fell out as she lay in wet mud after her death. Look closely though: patches of fur still survive, most notably on Lyuba's lower legs.

The blue crystals on Lyuba's skin are vivianite - a type of hydrated iron phosphate - that formed when Lyuba was buried in sediment.

The pockmarks on Lyuba's head and body were formed by fungi that grew on her skin after she lay exposed above ground.

Why is Lyuba so well preserved?
Three factors led to her excellent state of preservation:
1) She was buried quickly after death in fine sediment that sealed off oxygen.
2) She was "pickled" by acids formed by bacteria that entered her body soon after her death.
3) She remained frozen in Siberia's permafrost over many thousands of years.

The mud that enclosed her body contained certain bacteria that were capable of producing a mild acid that actually had a pickling effect on her tissues

[The hump on Lubya's neck contains] a very special kind of fat, known as brown fat, that's important in mammals in controlling body temperature.

Lyuba's internal organs are so well preserved that scientists found what she ate and drank still inside her intestines: milk from her mother, pollen from grasses and other plants, algae from lake water, and even mammoth dung.

Though Lyuba was still too young to eat "solid food" like plants, researchers discovered pollen in side her intestines. The pollen was mostly from grasses and sedges - but almost no trees - suggesting that Lyuba lived in a nearly tree-less environment.

Mammoth dung was also found inside Lyuba's intestines. Elephants feed dung to their calves to introduce bacteria that will help digest plants - apparently, mammoths did the same thing.

Residues of partly digested milk from Lyuba's mother indicate that Lyuba was well nourished and had eaten shortly before her death.

The development of Lyuba's baby teeth gives us a good idea of how long she spent in her mother's womb: about 22 months, which is the same as in elephants.

A growth line in Lyuba's tooth dentin - called the neonatal line - marks the time of Lyuba's birth. Isotope analysis confirms she was born in early spring. Lyuba's tooth dentin also tells us when she died. Tooth growth stopped when Lyuba was about one month old.

Lyuba's DNA is well preserved as represents a population of mammoths for which few samples exist. Her DNA may help us learn more about mammoth history.
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Classification: Animalia, Vertebrata, Mammalia, Proboscidea, Elephantidae

Age: Kargian Interglacial, Late Pleistocene, ~42 ka

Locality: banks of the Yuribei River, Yamal Peninsula, northern Siberia, Russia
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See info. at:
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Woolly_mammoth
and
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lyuba

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Taken on: June 11, 2010

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Sets appears in: • Pleistocene Rocks & Fossils • Russia Rocks, Minerals, Fossils more » • Mammal Fossils « less

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