In 1993, on the Russian island of Wrangel, located between the Chukchi and East Siberian seas in the basin of the Arctic Ocean, a sensational find was discovered - the bones of a mammoth, well preserved in the permafrost. The age of the remains turned out to be sensationally young in the stratigraphic timescale of the epochs. In this regard, many hypotheses have appeared in the scientific world. If representatives of this species survived almost to the biblical times not far from us, is it possible that not all mammoths died out at the end of the Pleistocene, and part of their population remained to this day somewhere in remote remote corners of the planet?
Huge animals covered with long thick wool with long tusks up to 4 meters lived on Earth in the middle of the Paleolithic (about 1.5 million years ago). There is a generally accepted opinion that the furry giants died all at the same time due to some kind of global catastrophe on a planetary scale. However, radiocarbon analysis of the found mammoth bones showed the time interval of their stay on Earth only 3700 years ago. At this time, in Egypt, the pharaohs were already mummified and giant pyramids-tombs were built for them, the ancient Sumerians in the Southern Mesopotamia invented writing, astronomy and mathematics, and in Ancient Babylon they already began to write books.
Mammoths lived everywhere on the planet: in India, on the African continent, in Eurasia, in America. But it is no coincidence that the most recent remains of prehistoric animals are found in the Republic of Sakha. Low climatic temperatures in this region have played the role of a natural refrigerator with permafrost. The first finding of mammoth bones in Yakutia dates back to 1799. It was discovered by the Russian merchant Boltunov and immediately informed the scientist Adams about it, who later took the remains found by the merchant to the city of St. Petersburg and placed them in the St. Petersburg Zoological Institute.
The remains of a mammoth from Wrangel Island practically turned the generally accepted theory of the extinction of mammoths on our planet. Earlier, 1750 BC, this island was still part of the peninsula adjacent to a large continent. There is a scientific hypothesis that the last population of mammoths migrated there, to a distant part of the mainland. Then a piece of land, together with relict animals, came off and was carried into the ocean. Now the island is separated from the mainland by the Long Strait, which is over 140 kilometers wide.
Yakut hunters still tell amazing stories about the meeting of their ancestors in the snow-covered tundra near the Oymyakonsky ulus with an unknown strange animal, similar to an elephant overgrown with wool. Perhaps the really furry giants or their prototype, for example, the trogonteria elephants, somehow adapted to the changing climate and still existed three thousand years ago. It is no coincidence that only legends about mammoths were kept in the people's memory, and there are no legends about other types of relic animals of that period, for example, about a woolly rhinoceros. In the area between the Indigirka and Yana rivers, reindeer herders and hunters come across large, incomprehensible tracks of unknown animals. Until now, for the northern peoples, the mammoth is considered a sacred animal.
Over the past 250 years, the tusks of over 25 thousand mammoths have been found in Yakutia. According to the statistics of 1809, in the area of the Oymyakonsky ulus, on average, one tusk was found on one kilometer of the route along the Indigirka River. For example, the explorer and pioneer Yakov Sannikov collected here 250 poods (about 4 tons) of mammoth tusk that year. Specially made calculations of scientists showed that from Siberia, in particular from Yakutia, during the Middle Ages, up to the beginning of the XX century, there were supplies of mammoth bone in huge quantities. The flow was comparable to the flow of ivory from Africa and India, its value reached 25 tons of mammoth bone per year.
The physique and appearance of the mammoth are described in detail in the science of paleontology thanks to practically intact, well-preserved hairy carcasses found in the permafrost. For example, in 1901 the whole mammoth carcass was found in Kolyma. In the stomach of the beast, they found the remains of those plant species that to this day grow in this area on floodplain meadows in the lower reaches of the Lena River. This means that the mammoths had something to eat, and they did not die of hunger, although ten thousand years ago the climate changed dramatically, and after it the vegetation of this region.
The global warming of the climate in recent years is causing ancient remains to be thawed from the permafrost to the surface. Searchers for expensive tusks no longer have to hammer through the frozen ground in Mammoth Hill near the village of Khandyga, so the number of such “mammoth seekers” is growing every year. In August 2002, near the village of Yukagir, on the river bank, a huge tusk and a preserved mammoth head, covered with skin and shreds of wool, were found. The mammoth, in full bloom in the year 40, died 18,000 years ago. For the first time in the world history of the study of mammoth fauna, this time, the eyes of a dead ancient animal have been preserved.
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The remains of the relict giant are studied by paleontologists, microbiologists, geneticists, soil scientists from all parts of the world. It is known that the tusk grew from the outer edge to the center, and a fresh vein formed in the bone every year. Its thin layers mean that the herbivore was starving or sick. Laboratory analysis of tusk slices of thousands of mammoths of various species and from different parts of the planet showed that before their almost simultaneous disappearance from the face of the Earth, all these furry giants did not eat up and did not feel very well. The main goal of the scientific world is to find out as a result of which cataclysms they all died out.
According to the Yukaghir find, scientists will compile a complete picture of the daily life of the mammoth. By examining the layers of tusk dentin, they will define the ecology of the time. By the cuts of the tusk, it is possible to determine how the habitat around has changed, which means that scientists will be able to make predictions for future climatic changes on our planet. This, in turn, will help predict when ultimately humanity on Earth will have no chance of survival.