April 11, 2008—A Tokyo medical team prepares to CT-scan the world's best preserved mammoth—missing only her tail and shaggy coat.

Completed by February, the resulting 3-D images (not yet released to the public) provide the first detailed look at a prehistoric animal's insides, Russian scientists announced this week. (Read full story.)

A hunter found 37,000-year-old "Lyuba" in Arctic Russia in May 2007 (see photo). She was later shipped to Tokyo's Jikei University School of Medicine and is now back in Russia for biopsies and detailed genetic analysis.

Researchers hope to sequence the entire mammoth genome from Lyuba and uncover ancient viruses in her tissues.

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