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