sciencetech-blog

comments

On the grassy plains of Siberia 42,000 years ago, a baby woolly mammoth fell into a sticky mud hole and choked to death, leaving her mother to grieve for her.

And how to scientists know this? They used a huge CT scanner to examine the mummified body of the creature, which was plucked from the Siberian permafrost in 2007.

Now, the 3D pictures have been released for the first time and they make for fascinating viewing.

In order to reveal Lyuba's cause of death, scientists used a huge CT scanner to examine the mummified body of the creature, which was plucked from the Siberian permafrost in 2007. Figures 1 and 2 are both CT scans showing Lyuba's soft tissue in her head. 3 shows hard structures including her bone and mineral deposits

Scientists, including mammoth expert John Fisher of the University of Michigan, scanned the body of the the world's most complete mammoth, who died when she was just 35 days old.

The body, which measures 33inches (85cm) tall and 51 inches (130cm) long – a little larger than a dog – is currently on display at the Natural History Museum in London.

The scientists took the opportunity to X-ray the mammoth in a giant CT scanner usually used to look inside engineers at the Ford Motor Company near Detroit, when Lyuba was traveling to a museum in New Jersey in 2010, Wired reported.

Using the images, they looked at the creature's bone structure and evidence to suggest how she died – and compared the pictures to those of another baby mammoth called Khroma, who died a few thousand years before Lyuba.

They found that Lyuba's trunk, mouth, oesophagus and trachea are all clogged with sediment, suggesting she choked to death or was asphyxiated.

Scientists believe that the little mammoth fell into a mud hole beside an ancient river bank.

Professor Adrian Lister, a mammoth researcher at the Natural History Museum, said: 'CT scans show her upper respiratory tract is packed with mud, which corresponds to our model of her sinking into soft mud.'

Fascinating: Lyuba, the baby mammoth (pictured) is the star attraction of the Natural History Museum's Ice Age exhibition. Experts thinks she fell into a sticky mud hole and choked to death, leaving her mother to grieve for her, 42,000 years ago

Scientists used the scan and x-ray images to study how Lyuba and another baby mammoth called Khroma died. They found Lyuba's trunk (figure 1), mouth, oesophagus and trachea are all clogged with sediment, suggesting she choked to death or was asphyxiated - and Khroma (figure 2) suffered the same fate

Pip Brewer, curator of fossils, mammals, at the museum told MailOnline that because Lyuba was so small, she would not have had the strength to pull herself out of the mud hole. And her fate befell other small mammoths too.

'We already know of a couple of examples of other mammals that died this way. They didn't have the bodyweight to extract themselves from the mud in the summer months,' she said.

By referring to the CT scans, experts also found that Khroma choked to death when she was around two months old, as her trunk and mouth were also filled with sediment.

Khroma also suffered a broken back and her remains had been picked at my arctic scavengers such as crows

By comparing the scans, the experts saw that Khroma's skull is much wider than Lyuba's and despite being younger, she has more developed shoulders and legs.

Because of this, Dr Fisher and his colleagues think that Kroma could be an undescribed sub-species, according to the study, published in the Journal of Paleontology.

By comparing the scans, the experts saw that Khroma's skull is much wider than Lyuba's and despite being younger, she has more developed shoulders and legs. Because of this, Dr Fisher and his colleagues think that Kroma could be an undescribed sub-species. Lyuba's skull is pictured left and Khroma's right

The world's most complete mammoth has gone on show at London's Natural History Museum. Here, the ancient animal is in her custom case being transported to the museum

It's as if she is sleeping: The baby mammoth (pictured) was plucked from the Siberian permafrost where she has hidden for 42,000 years

A desperate death: Scientists believe that Lyuba (pictured) fell into a mud hole beside an ancient river bank and choked to death. The baby mammoth's trunk, mouth, oesophagus and trachea were all clogged with sediment, suggesting she choked to death or was asphyxiated

The two mummies and the scans are a useful resource from which scientists can benchmark any new discoveries, as well as learn more about their living cousins, elephants.

Lyuba was discovered in Siberia by reindeer herder Yuri Khudi and his sons who were searching for wood along the Yuribei River, which was Lyuba's old stomping ground.

She is named after Yuri's wife and her name means love in Russian.

Just as modern elephants grieve for dead members of their herd, mammoths are thought to have done the same thing, so Lyuba's mother would have mourned her dead calf.

'I entirely expect that the mammoths grieved,' Ms Brewer said.

There is fossil evidence that mammoths shared many behaviours with modern elephants, such as matriarchs leading a herd of juveniles and adults encircling babies when the herd was under threat.

She explained that a depression in Lyuba's skull shows her last desperate attempts to breathe but said that as her story is being told today, her last struggle is not lost forever.

Scientists examined Lyuba's baby teeth to discover that she spent 22 months in the womb - the same amount of time as a modern elephant. A 'growth line' (labelled) in the dentine shows she was born in spring and was just 35 days old when she die

 

Meet Lyuba the world's most complete woolly mammoth

The remains of the mammoth were found by reindeer Yuri Khudi and his sons, left, while they were gathering firewood. The body was then sent to the Shemanovsky Musuem, right, in Russia to be examined (right)

Lyuba was otherwise healthy when she died and scientists discovered remnants of her mother's milk still inside her stomach.

She was too young to eat solids, but algae from lake water and traces of pollen from trees and plants were also found in her stomach. Experts believe that just like modern elephants, mother mammoths fed their offspring dung – which contained pollen – in order to introduce bacteria to help them digest plants. So Lyuba's last meals consisted of milk and dung.

The CT scans revealed that the little mammoth suffered no broken bones before her death and a hump on her neck containing brown fat shows she was well nourished and able to keep warm.

Her body was covered in thick dark brown fur but much has been lost while she was entombed in the ice.

Scientists examined Lyuba's baby teeth to discover that she spent 22 months in the womb – the same amount of time as a modern elephant.

A 'growth line' in the dentine shows she was born in spring and was just 35 days old when she died.

Lyuba's body was so well preserved because she was buried quickly after her death in fine sediment that sealed her off from oxygen.

The exhibition is the first opportunity for people to see the baby mammoth (pictured) in Europe and it also includes realistic life-sized models and skeletons of mammoths and their relatives

Lyuba the baby mammoth (pictured) who is housed in a glass case in the exhibition, measures 33inches (85cm) tall and 51 inches (130cm) long - a little larger than a dog

Lyuba's body was preserved when it sank into mud which later froze. It has been buried for 40,000 years in a vacuum, which has meant that oxygen has not decomposed the remains

Because of her riverbed location, her body was also pickled by acids formed by bacteria that entered her body soon after death, which was then frozen in permafrost.

Her DNA is well preserved and there are very few samples of this type of mammoth.

Palaeontologists are unsure of the mortality rate among baby woolly mammoths but Ms Brewer said that there was a 'high chance' that Lyuba would have been hunted had she survived her encounter with the mud hole.

'Even with cooperative hunting [by ancient man], bringing down a fully-grown mammoth was formidable and I can't imagine it happening too often.'

She thinks that humans picked on the easy targets – including baby mammoths – and that other predators such as lions and hyenas did the same.

Professor Lister said that ancient humans used mammoths for much more than food and there is a 'lot of evidence of interaction' between them.

'Tusks were used for carving into spearheads, bone was used in the construction of huts in central Europe and fur for warmth.'

The spread of the woolly mammoth corresponds with the spread of humans. Mammoths moved out of Africa three million years ago and humans two million years ago. Both animal and humans spread across Eurasia before moving across the Bering Strait, but 'people were not copying the mammoths'.

The Natural History Musuem's exhibition, Mammoths: Ice Age Giant runs until 7 September.

It is the first opportunity for people to see the baby mammoth in Europe and it will also include realistic life-sized models and skeletons of mammoths and their relatives. Real tusks and teeth from the woolly giants will also go on show along with lots of interactive exhibits.

The little mammoth was discovered near the Yuribei River (marked) in Siberia, Russia in May 2007

The discovery by Lyuba Yuri Khudi and his sons, one of whom is pictured with the mammoth, was a complete accident

The discovery in 2007 caused excitement in the scientific community because of Lyuba's completeness. Here, scientists make observations in Siberia where the body was found