Baby mammoth discovery unveiled

A baby mammoth unearthed in the permafrost of north-west Siberia could be the best preserved specimen of its type, scientists have said. The frozen carcass is to be sent to Japan for detailed study. The six-month-old female calf was discovered on the Yamal peninsula of Russia and is thought to have died 10,000 years ago. The animal's trunk and eyes are still intact and some of its fur remains on the body. Mammoths are an extinct member of the elephant family. Adults often possessed long, curved tusks and a coat of long hair. The 130cm (4ft 3ins) tall, 50kg Siberian specimen dates to the end of the last Ice Age, when the great beasts were vanishing from the planet. It was discovered by a reindeer herder in May this year. Yuri Khudi stumbled across the carcass near the Yuribei River, in Russia's Yamal-Nenets autonomous district. Last week, an international delegation of experts convened in the town of Salekhard, near the discovery site, to carry out a preliminary examination of the animal.

"The mammoth has no defects except that its tail was bit off," said Alexei Tikhonov, deputy director of the Zoological Institute of the Russian Academy of Sciences and a member of the delegation. "In terms of its state of preservation, this is the world's most valuable discovery," he said. Larry Agenbroad, director of the Mammoth Site of Hot Springs research centre in South Dako