Prepared by Emma SOLOMATINA. Prirodno-resursnye vedomosti (Bulletin of Natural Resources), 2000 The "Taimyr Mammoth" international project launched in May 1998 involves such leading lights as Professor Nikolai Veresh-chagin who has recovered over 150 mammoths in this country's permafrost; Yves Koppens, Doctor of Archeology, a major French expert on mammoths; Dick Mohl, a Dutch paleontologist researching in the fauna of the Late Pleistocene (Ice Age); Larry Agenbrod, Professor of Northern Arizona University (USA), a paleontologist who has described the bone remains of 52 mammoths that perished 26 thousand years ago on the territory of what is now the State of South Dakota. The head and sponsor of this project is Bernard Buigues (France). Taking part in this thrilling "mammoth expedition" was Vladimir Eisner, one of the custodians of the Taimyr wildlife sanctuary Here is his story: It happened in May 1996. Trudging along one of the snow-driven banks of the stream Kyrsa-Yuryakh near the community of Khatanga, reindeer-breeder Alexei Zharkov stumbled upon some object sticking out of the snow. The man called in his son and son-in- law. The three identified the thing as the tip of a mammoth's tusk. Marking up that place, they returned there in the beginning of September when the soil thawed to a depth of one meter or thereabouts. The reindeer men dug out two tusks, wrenching them out of the skull alveoli and thus damaging the skull. But we should not be too hard on those men: tusks are a precious thing for tundra residents, for they can sell such items or else barter them for food- stuffs, gasoline, snowmobile parts and the like. Besides, tusks are used for making reindeer harnesses, decorations and amulets... Still, the reindeer-breeders advised the local administration of the find. Its head, Nikolai Fokin, had a brainwave: why not set up a museum then and there, at Khatanga, right in the permafrost within one of the large natural ice-houses used for meat and fish kee ... Читать далее