IN celebration of the opening of Sotheby’s Maison at Landmark Chater in Hong Kong, the luxury and fine art broker has unveiled a monumental display of a prehistoric woolly mammoth at the Landmark Atrium. The exhibition runs through Aug. 29.

Measuring 3.5 meters in height, this is the first time that a mammoth skeleton of this size has been publicly displayed in Hong Kong.

Exceptionally well-preserved in its entirety, this mammoth skeleton is particularly rare as many mammoths displayed at museums are often pieced together with bones from multiple specimens.

Woolly mammoths were first recorded in northeastern Siberia during the middle Pleistocene in prehistoric cave paintings, and roamed the Earth for about 250,000 years.

With adults weighing as much as eight tons, these creatures had tusks that could grow to several meters long, used for fighting and foraging.

The current display is part of Sotheby’s “Another World” exhibition. Also in the Maison, visitors can see a 2.6 million-year-old woolly mammoth skull from Siberia, as well as the skeleton of a baby Gryposaur from the Late Cretaceous period between 100 million and 66 million years ago.

Visitors can also take part in Sotheby’s summer workshops starting from Aug. 24. Each one-hour session will start with a lecture led by a biological anthropologist professor from the University of Cambridge, followed by a hands-on workshop. (SD News)