Lyuba is a female woolly mammoth calf who died 41,800 years ago at the age of 30 to 35 days. Lyuba is believed to have suffocated by inhaling mud while bogged down in deep mud in the bed of a river her herd was crossing. Lyuba appears to have been healthy at the time of her death.
By examining Lyuba’s teeth, researchers hope to gain insight into what caused Ice Age mammals, including the mammoths, to become extinct at the end of the Pleistocene era around 10,000 years ago