Baby Mammoth Lyuba Not Visiting the UK

Everything Dinosaur has received a number of enquiries asking whether the beautifully preserved baby Woolly Mammoth known as Lyuba will be visiting the UK in 2019.  As far as we know, there are no plans for any museum in the United Kingdom to exhibit this amazing specimen next year.

Lyuba Not Coming to the UK Anytime Soon

The baby Woolly Mammoth known as Lyuba.
The 40,000-year-old baby mammoth Lyuba.

Picture credit: Uppa Photoshot (Daily Telegraph News)

Woolly Mammoth Drowned in a Muddy Pool 40,000 Years Ago

The almost perfectly preserved frozen carcass of a four-week-old, female Woolly Mammoth calf was discovered in the Yamal-Nenets region of Siberia eleven years ago.  The baby Mammoth was named Lyuba, after the wife of the reindeer herder who found her.  The specimen is part of the Shemanovskiy Museum and Exhibition Centre collection in Salekhard (Russia), but in death she has travelled far further than she did in her short life.  Lyuba was part of a special exhibition focusing on Mammoths and Mastodons that toured the world back starting in 2010/11 “Mammoths and Mastodons: Titans of the Ice Age”.  The last stop on that extensive tour was London, where Lyuba was exhibited at the Natural History Museum in 2014.

For models and replicas of Woolly Mammoths and other Ice Age creatures: Safari Ltd. Prehistoric World Models.

Extensive precautions have to be taken to protect this remarkable specimen, described by many palaeontologists as the “best preserved baby Woolly Mammoth ever found”.  In addition, back in 2009, this exhibit was insured for a “Mammoth” 1.1 million euros prior to the world tour.  Such high insurance costs act as a disincentive to all but the largest museums when it comes to funding an exhibition of this sort.  As far as team members at Everything Dinosaur are aware, there are no plans to exhibit Lyuba in the UK anytime in the near future.

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