Baby Mammoth's Innards Scanned

A medical team prepares an exquisitely preserved baby woolly mammoth for a CT scan in early 2008.Preliminary results from the scan have revealed the first detailed internal map from a prehistoric animal. Photograph courtesy Museum in Salekhard

(nationalgeographic) -- The frozen body of a baby woolly mammoth discovered last year in Arctic Russia has provided the first detailed internal look at a prehistoric mammal, scientists report. (See photos.)

The remarkably preserved mammoth calf is named Lyuba after the wife of the hunter who found the 37,000-year-old carcass in the remote Yamalo-Nenetsk region in May 2007.

The oxygen-deprived environment of its final resting place, likely a watery marsh or bog, prevented decay and kept it intact save for only its tail and shaggy coat.

Estimated to be just three to four months old when it died, the female has now been returned to Russia from Japan after undergoing computer tomography (CT) scans. full story