Siberian Baby Mammoth Heads To France

Earlier last month, Khroma, a baby Mammoth took its first airplane trip all the way from its frozen home in Siberia where it had lain for over 50,000 years to spend the summer on display in South East France's, Musee Crozatier.

Believed to be the world's oldest mammoth fossil, Khroma was discovered by a hunter in July 2009 amidst the melting permafrost on the banks of the river Khroma, 1,300 miles North of Yatusk, near the Arctic Ocean.

While they can't determine whether the foot-high, five foot long prehistoric animal is a boy or girl, scientists believe that Khroma was just six or seven months old when it died. While Khroma's body is intact, its trunk and the top of its head has been chewed off by predators - most likely a pack of foxes.

Khroma, who was packed in ice so that it wouldn't disintegrate, arrived in Paris in mid-June. Before being placed on display, it had to be treated to kill any germs that the baby may be harboring.

Scientists had to be very careful about how they went about it since they have never before dealt with a specimen this old and also one retrieved from permafrost. Fortunately, it all went well and Khroma now sits proudly in its unique cryogenic chamber, which keeps it at a comfortable -18 degrees Celsius. While baby Khroma may be the oldest mammoth on record, Lyuba remains the only mammoth specimen that has ever been found completely intact.

Woolly Mammoths, whose closest current day relative is the Asian Elephant, were believed to have inhabited the Earth up to about 5,000 years ago. They were divided into two groups - ones like Lyuba and Khroma that lived in the Arctic and others that were found in various parts of the world, including California.

The ones that lived in the Arctic had developed several adaptations to combat the cold, the most famous of which was the thick layer of shaggy hair, earning them the name 'woolly'. The mammoths also had extremely long tusks, which could extend up to 16ft. in length and were markedly more curved, than those of the modern elephant. Their eventual extinction is blamed on climate change, as well as, loss of habitat.

sources: timeslive.co.za, physorg.com,news.discovery.com