While he was away, his cousin had sold it to the store owner. Dogs had eaten part of the tail and ear, but it was still in “as close to perfect condition as you can imagine,” says scientist Daniel Fisher. The police came to help. The animal was a baby mammoth form the Ice Age. It was female, so the scientists named it after Yuri’s wife.
From Siberia, the mammoth was sent to the Netherlands and Japan. Scientists there studied it more closely. Detailed studies of her teeth and tusks showed she was just one month old when she died. Ongoing research has also shown us the sequence of events that led to her death. Lyuba fell and died near a muddy river. The mud helped keep her body frozen until she was found, 40,000 years later. Scientists hope that further studies will help explain how mammoths, like Lyuba lived. They also want to know why mammoths became extinct.