(10 Apr 2012) 1. Preserved body of baby mammoth, Lyuba, being lifted up from case
2. Wide of media taking pictures
3. Various of mammoth's preserved body on display
4. Various of men holding mammoth for media
5. Close of tail
6. Close of front legs
7. SOUNDBITE (Russian) Galina Karzanova, Assistant Curator of Shemanovsly Museum in Russia: ++NON VERBATIM TRANSLATION++
"First of all, Lyuba has a trunk, it's intact more or less, and it's the most fragile part in the mammoth, so she's very unique because she has a trunk, and also her ears are more or less still there, her skin is intact, so it's very rare. And her inner organs are very important for the scientists and her intestine is more or less there."
8. Wide of Galina Karzanova
9. SOUNDBITE (Russian) Galina Karzanova, Assistant Curator of Shemanovsly Museum in Russia: ++NON VERBATIM TRANSLATION++
"Thanks to Lyuba, scientists proved that baby mammoths are the same as today's baby elephants, and that they ate their mother's dropping to improve their digestion, it's true, modern elephants and ancient mammoths did the same."
10. Pan from trunk to eye of baby mammoth
11. Close of ear
12. Close of belly
13. Body of baby mammoth inside case
STORYLINE
An almost perfectly preserved baby woolly mammoth who lived 42,000 years ago began the Asian leg of a four-year world tour on Tuesday.
The one month-old practically intact female mammoth was found in 2007 by a Siberian reindeer herder and his sons.
Scientists believe the infant Ice Age mammal died after falling into mud near a river.
Named after the herder's wife, Lyuba, the world's best preserved woolly mammoth is now on display at a high-end shopping mall in Hong Kong.
On loan from the Shemanovskiy Museum and Exhibition Centre in Russia, Lyuba has already wowed viewers in ten North American cities.
In all, audiences from ten countries will be able to view the unique Ice Age specimen, whose skin, trunk and ears are still intact after being preserved in permafrost for thousands of years.
On Tuesday, staff at the exhibition in Hong Kong, which runs from 12 April till 10 May, carefully lifted up Lyuba's carcass from a case to show it to the media.
It was the first time the mammoth was taken out from its case since it arrived in Hong Kong on Sunday.
Galina Karzanova, Assistant Curator of Shemanovsly Museum in Russia, said Lyuba was unique because the trunk and most of the ears could still be seen.
"Her skin is intact, so it's very rare. And her inner organs are very important for the scientists and her intestine is more or less there," Karzanova said.
Mammoths, an extinct member of the elephant family, once ranged from Russia and northern China to Europe and most of North America, but their numbers began to shrink about 30-thousand years ago.
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