"Perfect" baby mammoth found

A baby mammoth has been uncovered in the permafrost of north-west Siberia.

The six-month-old frozen female calf is so well preserved that it looks as if it died only days ago, reviving hopes that the hairy beasts could one day walk the Earth again.

The creature, 4ft 3in tall and 110lb, is likely to be more than 9,000 years old - around the time they were vanishing from the grassy plains of the northern hemisphere at the end of the last ice age. The eyes are still intact, the trunk has a notch at the end that is rarely seen, and some fur remains on the body.

The mammoth was discovered by a reindeer herder, Yuri Khudi, in May in Salekhard on the Yamal peninsula. It has been named Lyuba after his wife.

The discovery became the major talking point of a recent mammoth symposium in Yakutsk. Dr Beth Shapiro, the director of the Henry Wellcome Ancient Biomolecules Centre at Oxford University, said: "This is by far the best that has been recovered."