Scientists believe that during glacial epoch, when the water area of the Arctic was covered with all-the-year-round several meters thick ice layer, the climate of Arctic regions was extremely continental. Motley grass grew on plains of Northern Yakutia in summertime, being fine forage for mammoths as well as other herbivorous animals. The unique Arctic steppe landscapes that do not have analogues at present are known as “mammoth prairies”.

The mammoth's wrist bone was found in a layer of ground from the horizon located at a depth of 23 metres above modern sea level. The age of a find is approximately 21,500 years. The rests of roots of grass found in nearby horizon are about 27,000 years old. The analysis of fossilized spores and pollen of superior plants allowed drawing a conclusion that in the beginning of the epoch of the maximum cold snap not tundra, but steppe landscape, prevailed across the territory of northern Yakutia. The researches are especially valuable as it was first time stratigrafic binding was made: the scientists defined not only the age of the mammoth's bone, but also the structure and the age of the rocks in which it was found.

In 1723, Spiridon Portnyagin found heads of a mammoth and a Siberian rhinoceros in a swamp located 200 versts far from Yakutsk . It was the first fixed fact of such kind.

In 1727, Doctor D.G. Messerschmidt, a traveller, had the luck to find remains of a mammoth and describe them in details. He made the first sketches of a head, teeth, tusks, bones and legs of a mammoth.

In 1799, hunter Osip Shumakhov found a frozen carcass of a mammoth, or “water bull”, as local residents called it, on Bykovsky precipice by channel of the Lena . He showed his find to Roman Doltunov, a merchant from Yakutsk , who made a sketch from the "bull". It was the first sketch of the giant's carcass. Nowadays the skeleton of the 60-70 years old mammoth which lived 358,000 years ago is exhibited in Zoological museum of Association of Sciences (Saint Petersburg) and known as Adams' mammoth (named after the the researcher - zoologist).

The lower tributary of the Indigirka on Berelyakh River at 71-st latitude in Allaihvsky region locates the largest cementery of mammoths. The cementery is known worldwide and is called Berelyahksky. A month of ground washout works (the method of excavations in conditions of permafrost) resulted in striking achievement: 8,500 bones of 140 individuals.

The head of the works, Honoured Geologist of the Yakut Autonomous Soviet Republic (YASR), B.S. Rusakov tells: “ … we found a 2.18 metres long right lower extremity of the mammoth with the length of the wool up to 86 cm . It had been lying in frozen ground for 13,000 years and next to it – a fossilized body of glutton from the same period. ‘Why such an agile predator couldn't get out of rather shallow crevice? And where is the mammoth itself?', - we were asking ourselves. Only after a drilled stone, obviously a tool, a stone shaving and other traces of human activity were found out, it became clear that we were on the place of one of the most northern site of ancient people. The crevice in which the mammoth's limb was found, obviously, served them some kind of a refrigerator”.

Over the period of the last 2.5 centuries, tusks of approximately 46,000 mammoths have been found in the Northeast of Siberia. Museums of the world exhibit 37 complete skeletons, 19 of them had been found in Yakutia.

Recently paleontologists received new data on mammoths : the largest males were about 3.75- 3.85 metre high. Smaller mammoths inhabited Wrangel Island 3,7 thousand years ago .

In the summer of 1900, on the Beryozovka River /300 km far from Srednekolymsk/, a corpse of the mammoth was revealed. Soon Saint Petersburg scientists received the report of it. In the autumn of 1901, the senior zoologist of the Zoological museum of the Academy of Sciences O.F. Hertz arrived at Srednekolymsk. The mammoth's carcass was lying under the frozen alluvial ground at a depth of 8 metres . People had to burn fires to take the giant out of permafrost which kept a corpse from corruption. The carcass was about 3 metres high and up to 4 metres long. We had to divide it into separate parts and transport it by 22 sledge. It was the first time when scientists dealt with soft tissues of a mammoth. The giant is demonstrated in the Zoological museum of the Russian Academy of Science in Saint Petersburg .

Aleksander Volkov, a bulldozer driver of deposit "Volnik-terrace", found mummified remains of mammoth-calf while preparing the gold-placer mine on the right coast of the river Olchan. It was the fifth find of that kind in the world, and in October of 2004, it was sent to Yakutsk from settlement Ust-Nera of Oymyakonsky region.

The young mammoth was 1-1.5 years old in the moment of death, experts say. Its remains had been lying in the ground for 15-20,000 years.

Bones of a strange animal are kept in a Museum of Paleontology of Adychinsky settlement, Verkhoyansky region. Being small and by the structure of the skeleton, this artiodactyl animal reminded a calf. German anthropologist Zorgel made the first find of an animal on border East Prussia at the end of XVIII century (that is why the animal was called zorgelia ). In the beginning of the last century three ,out of ten in the world, skeletons of zorgela, were found in the area of the Adycha River . Two of them were sent to Saint Petersburg , and one was left for the local museum.

Greenland whale became extinct in the seas of Yakutia 1,000 years ago. Hunting on the coast of the Arctic Ocean , Nikolay Tojonto found the skeleton of the whale with remains of soft tissues in the mouth of the river Big Kuropatochnaya in 1964. This sea mammal was about 25 metres long. Nowadays its skeleton is the largest paleontologic exhibit in Em.Yaroslavsky Yakutsk State United Museum of History and Culture of Peoples.

In the summer of 1968 the goldminers of combine Yndygyrzoloto at tunnelling of mine #221 on the spring Balkhan (the tributary of the river Selerikan running into Indigirka ) encountered a fertilized body of a Glacial period horse at a depth of 9 metres . Age of a find – 37,000 years. The horse was described for the first time by the scientist - biologist P.A.Lazarev in the monography Anthropogenous horses of Yakutia and in scientific literature it is usually called selerikanian .

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