Scientists Took CT Scans of a Baby Mammoth

Russian scientists have taken a CT Scan of Lyuba, a 4-month-old baby mammoth found frozen in a Siberian riverbank:

The mammoth is named after the wife of the hunter who found her last year. The body was shipped back to Russia in February from Japan, where it was studied using computer tomography in a process similar to one doctors use to scan patients.

"We could see for the first time how internal organs are located inside a mammoth. It is pretty important from a scientific point of view," said Alexei Tikhonov, deputy director of the Russian Academy of Science's Zoological Institute, who has been leading the project.

"Her internal organs were well preserved -- the heart was seen distinctly with all its ventricles and atria, as well as the liver and its veins," Tikhonov told Reuters.

"This is the best preserved specimen not only of the mammoth but of any prehistoric animal."

Link - via Scribal Terror. Photo (Daniel Fisher / University of Michigan)

Previously on Neatorama: Frozen Baby Mammoth


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I assure you that every scientist wants to clone the mammoth. Cloning is beastly hard. Once the cloned cell is achieved, it then must be implanted in the womb of an elephant to grow and finally be born two years later. The female elephant must be willing and fertile. Animals are not like young human females that can get pregnant every month. Animals must be "in heat" to become pregnant. Overseeing the impregnation and the gestation process is about as challenging as the cloning. That is why it may be a long time before we achieve Jurasic Park.
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Is it wrong that I think that poor, dead little mammoth is cute?
It makes me sad, it's just a little baby and it's frozen...and dead...
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