photo: from the archive of the participants

Scientists of the Mammoth Museum of the Scientific Research Institute of Applied Ecology of the North of North-Eastern Federal University took part in the VII International Conference on Mammoth and Their Relatives held in Taichung, Taiwan, on September 15 to 23.

The leading scientific employee of the Museum Semyon Grigoriev made a report on the topic "New discoveries of bone points of the Stone Age from the Arctic zone of Yakutia" - about unique spears from the mammoth tusk and the horn of a woolly rhinoceros from the collection of NEFU Museum, found in the Ust-Yansky region and on the Bolshoi Lyakhovsky Island. The information aroused great interest among specialists worldwide.

"It was a team work of Yakut, Russian and foreign scientists. The artifacts have been studied with the use of modern technologies in our university, such as 3D and the electronic scanning microscope, which allows not only to study the macrostructure of the gun surface, but also to reveal the chemical composition", the scientist said.

A report on the first discovery of the mummy of the elk from Yakutia and about one of the unique exhibits of NEFU Mammoth Museum – elk calf aged 9,200 years, was presented by the senior research associate Maksim Cheprasov. "This is the world's first discovery of a full carcass of the fossil elk in a frozen state. Two years ago, a comprehensive study of the discovery was started, and the first interesting results have already been obtained. Currently, the carcass is stored in the cryo-storage of the museum and after the research will become one of the greatest exhibits", the candidate of biological sciences said.

NEFU scientists also presented a report on the location of the mammoth fauna of the late Pleistocene Yunyugen in the basin of the Yana River. According to the research engineer Gavril Novgorodov, this location is one of the most promising "mammoth cemeteries" in Yakutia both in terms of the number of bones and species composition of fossil bone animals of the late Pleistocene.

In addition, they spoke about the results of the joint scientific work of NEFU and the Korean Institute of Sooam Biotech on the genome of primitive bisons of Yakutia and the forest bison. "It is gratifying that the university has the opportunity to talk about its developments at a forum on this scale", NEFU scientists noted. "At the conference, we established contacts with colleagues and planned new joint projects".

Reference:

A representative forum of specialized professionals from around the world who are studying extinct proboscideans, is held every three years in different countries. According to the decision of the organizing committee, the next International Mammoth Conference will be held in 2020 in India.