baby woolly mammoth

This is Lyuba, a female baby woolly mammoth that lived for only 30 to 35 days. She is believed to have died around 41,800 years ago and is considered the best-preserved mammoth ever found. Lyuba was discovered by an indigenous hunter and reindeer herder named Yuri Khudi and his three sons on the bank of a frozen river in Siberia. After conducting various tests, scientists concluded that the baby mammoth had been preserved in lactic acid, produced by a bacterium that entered her body shortly after death. A CT scan further revealed that she still retained her organs, and her intestines showed traces of feces from an adult mammoth. Baby mammoths typically consume their mother's feces to obtain the necessary microbes needed for proper grass digestion. The scan also indicated that her cause of death was drowning in muddy water. Lyuba was roughly the size of a large dog, measuring 33.5 inches (85 cm) in height and 51 inches (130 cm) in length (from trunk to tail). She weighed 110 lbs (50 kg).