Baby Mammoth Might Be Cloned

Subject: Baby Mammoth Might Be Cloned Sat Apr 12, 2008 10:16 pm

Russian scientists say they’ve managed to develop the most detailed picture ever of the insides of prehistoric animals. They made the discovery after studying a baby mammoth found immaculately preserved in the Yamalo-Nenets region in the Urals last year.

The scientists say it was crucial for the study of prehistoric life to pinpoint the exact location of the animal’s internal organs.

Some experts hope that the perfect condition in which the body of the mammoth was found could allow extricate intact DNA from his cells, and, as a result, clone the animal in future.

The 37,000 year-old baby mammoth was named ‘Lyuba’ after the wife of a nomadic reindeer tribesman who found it.

With its trunk still intact, eyes in place and small tufts of fur still on its skin, Lyuba looks more like a museum fake than an eye-witness to the Ice Age, though its tail is missing.

The creature’s organs were also perfectly preserved, and its heart could be clearly seen with the help of computer scanning techniques.

One hundred and thirty centimetres long, 90 centimetres tall and weighing only 50 kilogrammes, the mammoth is almost exactly as it was when it died.

The animal was immediately buried in a watery area or a bog after its death. There was no decay in lack of oxygen. It was located there in a frozen state for several thousand years until it reappeared to the world after a part of the river’s bank slipped off.

To keep it from deteriorating, Lyuba was being stored at minus 10 degrees Celsius in an industrial freezer in the regional museum.

Mammoths, believed to be close relatives of the modern day elephant, roamed the earth from almost 5 million years B.C. to just a few thousand years B.C., when they disappeared.

http://www.russiatoday.ru/features/news/23323

Baby Mammoth Might Be Cloned

Baby Mammoth Might Be Cloned

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