Well-preserved baby woolly mammoth carcass on display in Moscow

MOSCOW, Oct. 29 (UPI) -- The incredibly well-preserved carcass of a baby woolly mammoth recently went on display in Moscow as part of an event for the Russian Geological Society, and it is already drawing crowds. The carcass was found in the far north of Russia, among the snow and ice of the region known as Yakutia -- one of the coldest continually inhabited places on Earth.

Researchers estimate the mammoth's age at somewhere between 38,000 and 40,000 years old. They say the juvenile mammoth likely died between the ages of six and nine. After a brief tour through Japan and Taiwan, the baby mammoth is now featured in an exhibit at the Russian Geographic Union.

Its time spent north of the Arctic Circle kept the baby mammoth, nicknamed Yuka, remarkably intact.

"When we started an MRI scan of the mammoth, just to find our her age, and there it was -- her brain," Sergey Saveliev, a Russian neuroscientist, reportedly told the Itar-Tass news agency. "We were astonished. If she was delivered to us in the same state in which she was found, we would have known as much about the mammoth brain, as we know about the elephant brain."

Researchers say physical evidence suggests Yuka survived an attack by a small lion, and that the mammoth was likely being chased in the moments before she broke her leg and later died from her injuries.

Mammoths died off during the end of the last ice age, roughly 10,000 years ago. Though scientists suggests some populations may have survived for longer in Alaska and on islands off Siberia.