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 last year. Yuri Khudi stumbled across the carcass near the Yuribei River, in Russia's Yamal-Nenets autonomous district.
That specimen failed to yield DNA of sufficient quality, but some researchers believe it may only be a matter of time until the right find emerges from Siberia.
Bringing mammoths back from the dead could take the form of injecting sperm into the egg of a relative, such as the Asian elephant, to try to create a hybrid. Alternatively, scientists could attempt to clone a pure mammoth by fusing the nucleus of a mammoth cell with an elephant egg cell stripped of its DNA.
But scientists warned that scientifically valuable Siberian mammoth specimens were being lost to a lucrative trade in ivory, skin, hair and other body parts. The city of Yakutsk in Russia's far east forms the hub for this trade.
Local people are scouring the Siberian permafrost for remains to sell on, and more carcasses could be falling into the hands of dealers than are finding their way to scientists.
The mysteries of her appearance on a frozen river bank in the Yamal, and the intersection of the people who tend to her, are the subject of National Geographic's Waking the Baby Mammoth documentary. In the following link you will be able to discover more about the discover of Lyuba.
National Geographic documentary
Additionaly we suggest two short videos about this important archeological discover. In the first one we can watch the story of the discovery of the world's most complete baby mammoth, as told by the man who found her.
The second video gives an overview of the main results of the researches carried out.
