Mammoth trip for ancient Siberian

AFTER tens of thousands of years under the Siberian frost, a baby woolly mammoth is taking a summer vacation in France.

Baby Khroma, one of the oldest intact mammoths found, went on display in a French museum after tests to ensure the carcase was no longer bearing the anthrax believed to have killed the mammal.

Khroma is now on display at the Musee Crozatier in Puy-en-Velay, in the south of France, in a cryogenic chamber kept at -18C.

The 80cm-high, 1.6-metre-long prehistoric guest may be the oldest baby mammoth ever discovered, with scientists claiming it is more than 50,000 years old.

Khroma, dug out last year from the Yakutia region in Siberia, arrived in France on Sunday, as part of a year of Franco-Russian cross-cultural events.

The mammoth was delayed by three weeks on concerns about the transfer of an animal that might contain lethal bacteria. Russia's chief epidemiologist Gennady Onishchenko said the mammoth died of anthrax, according to news reports. Scientists carried out a further study of the risks involved and the trip was given the go-ahead.

After arriving in France, Khroma went to a conservation facility in Grenoble, where it underwent gamma ray treatment to eliminate any potentially lethal bacteria. The presence of anthrax could not be fully confirmed from the first studies, but the treatment was used as a precaution, said the museum's paleontologist Frederic Lacombat.

The laboratory had used the same procedure when it treated the Ramses II mummy for parasites.

Researchers plan in late August to take the mammal to a nearby medical facility for an autopsy and scanning.

The researchers hope to discover valuable information about the mammoth calf in time for the 5th International Conference on Mammoths in Puy-en-Velay in September.