A frozen mammoth dug up from the Siberian tundra has been unveiled in central Japan in a preview of the six-month World Exposition, which is expected to draw millions of tourists.
The beast, believed to have lived 18 000 years ago, has been preserved in a giant refrigerator. It is a key exhibit at the Expo, which will open next Friday and largely feature modern wonders such as robots.
Full-bodied mammoths have been unearthed in the past, but this exhibit is billed as the most successful attempt yet to display the animal almost fully.
The mammoth on display has tusks, a front leg and a nearly intact, soil-coloured head covered with muscle tissue and some woolly hair.
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“This is not a mere pavilion but a laboratory, as we will do scientific research here,” Toshio Nakamura, secretary-general of the exposition, told the opening ceremony of the “Mammoth Lab”.
Visitors can view the mammoth, which was excavated in 2002, from windows at the lab, where the temperature and humidity are controlled by computers.
A group of Russian and Japanese scientists hope to clone mammoths from the animal’s remains by using elephant egg cells.
The multimillion-dollar project between Russia and Japan to examine the beast is intended to find out why mammoths became extinct in the Ice Age.
“The sad fact that mammoths became extinct is telling an important thing to us,” said Alexander K Akimov, vice-president of the Sakha region in the Russian Federation, which owns the animal.
“We have to cherish the Earth and we should not forget about fostering all kinds of lives.”
- This article was originally published on page 13 of Saturday Argus on March 19, 2005
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