Lyuba was just 35 days old when she died in a mudslide and now, 42,000 years later, the world's oldest and most intact mammoth has arrived in Sydney.

The baby mammoth, whose name means "love" in Russian, made the long trip from Siberia in a crate, having to be placed in a refrigerator at Dubai airport while accompanied by a minder from the Shemanovsky Yamal-Nenets District Museum in Siberia.

"She's an extraordinarily delicate thing," Australian Museum creative producer Trevor Ahearn said.

Mr Ahearn said Lyuba's arrival was "extremely nerve-wracking, [but] at the same time a thrill".

Lyuba came to Australia from the Shemanovsky Yamal-Nenets District Museum in Siberia. ( Supplied )

"She's come from the Arctic Circle, which is clearly a very different climate to Sydney. We've had to put her in our special store, which is climate controlled and she had to stay there for 24 to 48 hours to acclimatise before we could crack open the case," he said.

Now, out of quarantine and painstakingly examined and mounted, Lyuba is the drawcard for the Australian Museums' Mammoths: Giants of the Ice Age exhibition.

"I guess the star of the show is Lyuba the baby woolly mammoth from Siberia," the Australian Museum's director Kim McKay told the ABC.

Lyuba was discovered in 2007 in north-western Siberia by a family who were reindeer herders.

"They knew not to touch her because they were animists and didn't want to bring bad luck," Ms McKay said.

Lyuba made the trip from Siberia to the southern hemisphere in this crate. ( ABC News: Philippa McDonald )

A very traumatic end to life for a very little mammoth

The baby mammoth is mostly intact; however wild dogs have bitten off her tail and part of her ear.

"She's been more studied than any other woolly mammoth on earth," the director said.

"There's fur on her body, she even has her milk tusks as well as her milk teeth."

Staff at the Australian Museum were very excited but also nervous about Lyuba's arrival. ( ABC News: Philippa McDonald )

The Australian Museum's curator of palaeontology, Dr Matthew McCurry, described Lyuba as "the most complete mammoth that we have".

"Most fossils that we find are tiny and fragmentary. Lyuba is almost complete," he said.

Scientists believe the baby mammoth was frozen and preserved by lactic acid-producing bacteria.

They were able to see that Lyuba's last meal was grass.

"She died in a mudslide, we know that because inside her trunk, inside her air passages there's mud preserved," Dr Matthew McCurry said.

Lyuba has her flesh, internal organs, bones and milk tusks all perfectly intact. ( ABC News: Philippa McDonald )

Mr Ahearn told the ABC how the staff handling Lyuba were very fond of the little mammoth.

"It's not difficult to imagine she would have been cute and cuddly." Mr Ahearn said.