mammoth ice-baby the extinctions also coincided

however,with the arrival of another ecology-altering force.Modern humans arose in Africa about 195000 years ago and spread int o northern Eurasia some 4000 years ago.As time went go,their expanding populations brought increasing pressure to bear on prey speices. In addition to exploiting mammoths for food-a big male killed in the autumn would see a band of hungry hunters through many lean winter days-they used their bones and ivory to make weapons,tools,figurines,and even dwellings.Some scientist believe that these human hunters,using throwing spears fitted with deadly stone points,were as much to blame as climate change for the great die-off.Some say they caused it.The debate over the megafaunal extinction is one of the liveliest in paleontology today,and not one likely resolved by a single specimen,no matter how complete.But Khudi was right that the now missing baby-its flesh,internal organs,stomach contents,bones,milk tusks and other teeth,all intact-would be of enormous interest to the outside world.he also suspected that a person willing handle such a thing would probably turn a nice profit-ivory traders regularly visited the region to buy mammoth tusks,and who knows what they'd pay for an intact mammoth?Khudi's suspicions soon fell on one of his own cousins,whom some local Nenets had seen on the sand-bar and later,riding away on his reindeer sled toward the town of Novvy port.Khudi and Serotetoo set off in pursuit on snowmobile.When they arrived.They found the little mammoth propped up against the wall of a store.People were talking snapshots of it on their cell phones.The shop owner had bought the body from Khudi's cousin for two snowmoblies and a year's worth of food.Though it was no longer quite perfect-stray dogs had gnawed off part of its tail and right ear-with the help of some local police,Khudi and Serotetto managed to reclaim the infant.The body was packed up and shipped by helicopter to the safety of the Shemanovsky Museum in Salekhard,the regional capital.Luckily there was a happy ending,says Alexei Tikhonov,director of the St.Petersburg Zoological Museum and one of the first scientist to view the baby,a female.Yuri Khudi rescued the best preserved mammoth to come down to us from the ice age.Grateful officials named her Lyuba,after Khudi's wife.