[BCMA] 40,000 year-old mammoth arriving for first time in Canada

Wed May 18 12:26:23 PDT 2016

May 18, 2016

Meet 40,000-year-old baby mammoth Lyuba
at the Royal BC Museum

VICTORIA, BC - A 40,000-year-old baby woolly mammoth, the best-preserved specimen in existence, will take centre stage when the Mammoths: Giants of the Ice Age feature exhibition opens June 3 at the Royal BC Museum.

Lyuba (pronounced Lee-OO-bah) is the world's most complete mammoth. Her remarkable discovery in the frozen soil of the Arctic in 2007 by a Siberian reindeer herder made immediate international headlines.

This will be the first opportunity to the see the baby mammoth in Canada. Lyuba is on loan from the Shemanovskiy Yamal-Nenets District Museum and Exhibition Complex in northern Siberia, Russia.

"We are honoured that the Shemanovsky Museum-Exhibition Complex is loaning Lyuba to the Royal BC Museum," CEO Jack Lohman says. "Seeing this unbelievable treasure in person will allow British Columbians, and our visitors to discover how science has brought this baby mammoth's story to life. This is an example of our continued collaboration with cultural institutions across the globe to further interest in science, culture and history."

Scientists were able to retrace Lyuba's short life and determine that she was about 30 days old when she suffocated after being trapped in mud along the banks of a river. Samples of Lyuba's soft tissue and tusks suggest she was healthy at the time of her death.

A time-lapse showing the installation of Lyuba will be featured on the Royal BC Museum's YouTube channel (www.youtube.com/user/RoyalBCMuseum<http://www.youtube.com/user/RoyalBCMuseum>) by May 31st.

Mammoths: Giants of the Ice Age is presented with lead marketing partner Tourism Victoria. The exhibition is in partnership with The Field Museum.

1.                     Backgrounder Attached below - Lyuba

NOTE TO EDITORS: Images available for download. Send requests to contact below.

About the Royal BC Museum

The Royal BC Museum explores the province's human history and natural history, advances new knowledge and understanding of BC, and provides a dynamic forum for discussion and a place for reflection. The museum and archives celebrate culture and history, telling the stories of BC in ways that enlighten, stimulate and inspire. Looking to the future, the Royal BC Museum will be a refreshed, modern museum, extending its reach far beyond Victoria as a world-class cultural venue and repository of digital treasures.
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Media contact:
Royal BC Museum Media Inquiries
250-387-3207
news at royalbcmuseum.bc.ca<mailto:news at royalbcmuseum.bc.ca>

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BACKGROUNDER -  LYUBA

First time in Canada for 40,000-year-old preserved baby mammoth

In 2007, a Siberian reindeer herder and two of his sons made a fantastic discovery - an intact baby woolly mammoth, preserved in the frozen soil of the Arctic for some 40,000 years. The baby mammoth was named Lyuba (pronounced Lee-OO-bah) after the herder's wife.

Lyuba's discovery made headlines around the world.  The Mammoths: Giants of the Ice Age exhibition at the Royal BC Museum in Victoria marks the first time people will be able to see the baby mammoth in Canada.

Lyuba is on loan from the Shemanovskiy Yamal-Nenets District Museum and Exhibition Complex in northern Siberia, Russia.

Lyuba is preserved in remarkable condition, giving researchers rare insights into the lives and habits of her extinct species. After Lyuba was found, an international team of Russian, French, Japanese and American scientists performed DNA analysis, an autopsy, and used computerized X-ray tomography and microsampling techniques to explore her anatomy and physiology.

Previously, the researchers had worked together for more than a decade examining fossils, tusks, and other frozen mammoth carcasses found in Siberia. But Lyuba was by far the best-preserved specimen they had ever seen.

The scientists retraced Lyuba's short life and determined that she was only about 30 days old when she died of suffocation after being trapped in mud along the banks of a river. While she struggled to free herself, her trunk filled with silt and her body was quickly covered by sediment. Samples of Lyuba's soft tissue and tusks suggest she was healthy at the time of her death.

One of the most puzzling questions about Lyuba was how she remained so well preserved, even though she lay exposed almost a year before discovery. Why didn't her flesh rot during this last year?

The scientific team's American member, Daniel Fisher, PhD, a University of Michigan paleontologist and guest curator at The Field Museum in Chicago, provided the answer based upon his own research. Dr. Fisher found that Lyuba had been preserved by lactic-acid-producing bacteria that colonized her body after death. This microbial process "pickled" her soft tissues and worked, along with freezing, to keep Lyuba's carcass - approximately 110 pounds and 45 inches long - in excellent condition.

To prepare Lyuba for the Mammoths: Giants of the Ice Age exhibition at the Royal BC Museum, Russian scientists have preserved her body using formalin, a chemical that will make her tissue less susceptible to decay and allow Lyuba to be displayed without refrigeration.

Lyuba's visit is not the Royal BC Museum's first encounter with Russia. The Museum and Archives has a history of travelling to Russia and engaging with Russian institutions.

Royal BC Museum Curators Dr. Richard Hebda and Dr. Ken Marr, in collaboration with Tomsk State University, collected plants and plant DNA samples from the Altai Mountains of southern Siberia in 2010 and in the Magadan region of far eastern Russia in 2011, to help trace the Ice Age history of BC alpine plants.

In 2014, a researcher at the A.V. Zhirmunsky Institute of Marine Biology of the Far Eastern Branch of the Russian Academy of Sciences travelled to the Royal BC Museum to examine marine clams in our Invertebrates collection.

Coinciding with the exhibition, the Royal BC Museum will unveil a major update to its Natural History gallery, home of the iconic Woolly Mammoth. Hands-on, interactive displays will present the latest scientific and archaeological discoveries to reveal the most complete understanding to date of life in British Columbia during the Ice Age.

Mammoths: Giants of the Ice Age opens June 3 and runs until Dec. 31, 2016.

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