New Royal BC Museum exhibit features Lyuba, a 40,000-year-old baby mammoth

Dire wolves, mastodons and short-faced bears, oh my.

Those are just some of the creatures featured in a new exhibit at Victoria's Royal BC Museum called Mammoths: Giants of the Ice Age.

The exhibit includes a 40,000-year-old baby woolly mammoth as its centrepiece, which the museum calls the best-preserved specimen in existence.

The mammoth, on loan from the Shemanovskiy Yamal-Nenets District Museum and Exhibition Complex in Siberia, has been travelling the world since 2010.

The mammoth is named Lyuba, after the wife of the Siberian herder who discovered it, according to Evgeniya Khzyainov, deputy director and curator for the Shemonovskiy Museum.

Khzyainovtold All Points West's Sterling Eyfordthatthe mammoth was about one or two months old when it died by drowning.

"When she died she wasn't damaged by other animals, she was frozen, and when she froze it was [lucky] she wasn't damaged again by animals," saidKhzyainov, speaking through an interpreter.

This is the first time that Lyubawill be displayed in Canada although the exhibit's stop in Toronto featured a replica of the mammoth.

"I know it was very well-received in Toronto they loved it there," Chris McGarrity, who helped bring the exhibit to Victoria.

"I think it's a fabulous show. It just shows, I think [it] just changes some misconceptions about what these animals were and how they lived, when they lived, where they lived, their evolutionary relationships. That's something that I was really interested in."

McGarrity added another highlight is the exhibit's dire wolf skull.

"Anyone who loves Game of Thrones, like we all do, I think it is really cool for them to see that," he said. "I think there's just something for everyone here There's just so much cool material at this exhibit."

The exhibit opens to the public on June 3and runs until Dec. 31.

With files form CBC Radio One's All Points Westand Sterling Eyford

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