Experts say the mammoth head, dug up earlier this year, is the most intact specimen of its kind recovered in 200 years. Scientists will conduct tests in a laboratory with a gallery so visitors can watch.
Preliminary tests suggest the bull mammoth lumbered across the prehistoric Siberian plains at more than 9 feet tall, weighing as much as 5 tons, Suzuki said. It was probably between 40 and 45 years old when it died.
His team hopes a battery of planned tests will help unravel the mystery of why mammoths became extinct some 10,000 years ago.
They will use advanced X-rays to peer inside the mammoth's head and generate a 3-D map of its brain; study muscle tissue to determine how mammoths walked; look at rocks and pollen caught in its fur; cut into the tusks to determine what it ate and whether it was ill; and take DNA samples to answer questions about diseases and viruses.
Mammoths first appeared in Africa as long as 4 million years ago, and they roamed the plains of Siberia for nearly 2 million years before suddenly dying off. Scientists remain divided over the cause of the mammoths' extinction, with theories pointing at human hunters, a killer disease or climate change.
For more than two centuries, mammoth remains have been turning up in the Russian tundra above the Arctic Circle. The Expo's mammoth was excavated north of the town of Yakutsk, about 3,100 miles east of Moscow.
Japanese researchers have for years been searching for mammoth remains in Siberia in a separate project aimed at someday making a clone. So far, no DNA samples have been suitable for such an attempt
forgot to post the rest of the article because I was thinking of the Mammoth sashimi.
How could tests on one frozen animal hope to deduce that?
Current thinking is they were hunted to death by early man.
A WOOLLY MAMMOTH was unearthed from the Siberian permafrost Oct. 17, 1999 and transported, intact and still frozen to a laboratory for study. Scientists used radar imaging to find the 23,000-year-old creature. then excavated a huge block of dirt to preserve it. REUTERS PHOTO
" Tastes like chicken!"