Yuka mammoth

Have just come back from an amazing exhibit focussing on the baby mammoth found in the siberian permafrost about 10 years ago.

The 39 000 year old mammoth, called Yuka, and a mummified wolly rhinoceros, also from the permafrost, have come to Yokohama for the summer.

Yuka was found sticking out of a river bank in Siberia close to where a group of mammoth hunters usually work. They dug it out, kept it on ice, literally (i.e. they left it outside in the snow - this is siberia, after all), and called the museum.

I had already read about Yuka when it was discovered, and how it is the best-preserved and most complete mammoth ever found, still in it's thick coat of fuzzy orange fur.

But what I did not know is that it was so well-preserved it still had its brain, and they have managed to take it out of the skull in one piece, and are now looking into how mammoths thought and such.

"That's where we cut it open, see?"

They have also noticed quite a few chunks of flesh missing, possibly cut out by early humans. The humans might have actually have made it possible for us to find Yuka, by burying the remains of the body so as to come back for it later.... and never coming back.

The riverbanks in that area have also produced half a horse, a near-complete whooly rhinoceros, and innumerable bones, tusk, teeth of other mammoths, bison and small antelope-type things.
Must be quite gruesome taking a hike around there if you haven't been warned....