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Ice Age baby

Photo: AP

Baby mammoth: Frozen for 10,000 years.

It’s a gift from the Ice Age. A Russian hunter found what he first thought was a dead reindeer in the icy Yamalo-Nenetsk region. But a close look showed that the body was an ancient mammoth, though a baby one, preserved in ice for about 40,000 years. Mammoths lived on Earth in the last Ice Age about 1.8 million years ago. The recent find was a female, around six months old, and was the size of a big dog. It weighed 50 kg and was 130cm long. Being a perfectly preserve d example, except for her hair, Lyuba (named after her discoverer’s wife) is being studied for the genetic history of prehistory’s giants. After three-dimensional computer mapping in Japan and an autopsy in St. Petersburg, the Ice Age baby will be put on display at Salekhard, a town in the Russian Arctic.

COMPLIED BY R. KRITHIKA

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