HOME |
RSS | 
Photo: Henri Vuillet / Puy en Velay townhall
After being buried for tens of thousands of years in the Siberian permafrost, a baby woolly mammoth named Khroma is going on display in Musee Crozatier in Puy-en-Velay, France.
The good news is that scientists are pretty sure that it’s free of the anthrax bacteria that killed it:
The mammoth was delayed by three weeks after concerns surfaced about the transfer of an animal that might contain lethal bacteria. Russia’s chief epidemiologist, Gennady Onishchenko, said the mammoth died of anthrax, according to Russian news reports. Russian scientists carried out further study of the risks involved, and the trip was given the go-ahead, Gorbunov said.
After arriving in France, Khroma went to a special conservation facility in Grenoble, where it underwent gamma ray treatment for eliminating any potentially lethal bacteria. The presence of anthrax could not be totally confirmed from the first studies, but the treatment was used as a precaution, said the museum’s paleontologist, Frederic Lacombat.
Using ancient DNA extracted from specimens of woolly mammoths preserved in the Siberian permafrost, researchers from the University of Adelaide and other universities managed to reconstruct the hemoglobin of these long-extinct beasts. The researchers converted the protein’s DNA sequences into RNA and inserted it into E. coli bacteria, which then manufactured the ancient mammoth protein. Does that mean we’ll be seeing woolly mammoths strolling the streets of Adelaide any time soon?
No, says the study’s co-author, Professor Alan Cooper, director of the Australian Centre for Ancient DNA at the University of Adelaide. "This is not going to bring the species back to life. We’ve only done this with one protein."
“It is the same as if we went back 30,000 years and stuck a needle into a living mammoth,” says Professor Cooper.
“This is true palaeobiology, as we can study and measure how these animals functioned as if they were alive today.”
From the Upcoming 
ueue, submitted by 
 |
 |
 |
Forget jigsaw puzzles, over at the Neatorama Shop, we've got some really cool (funducational?) 3D Anatomy Models/Puzzles with removable organs. My favorite is of the Woolly Mammoth and the Snail: Link
This is pretty cool: National Geographic Channel has a fantastic feature titled Waking the Baby Mammoth, about the discovery of a well-preserved body of a baby woolly mammoth:
Only a handful have ever been found before. But none like her. Her name is Lyuba. A 1-month-old baby mammoth, she walked the tundra about 40,000 years ago and then died mysteriously. Discovered by a reindeer herder, she miraculously re-appeared on a riverbank in northwestern Siberia in 2007. She is the most perfectly preserved woolly mammoth ever discovered. And she has mesmerized the scientific world with her arrival – creating headlines across the globe.
Link | More Videos – Thanks Minjae!
Previously on Neatorama: Scientists Took CT Scans of a Baby Mammoth
