thanks for the program we take of the fathers corner of eastern russia where archaeologists about unearthing well preserved remains of ice age mammals. the shore of the c.e.o. before it's paralyze mother down one of the most extreme regions of russia you can get to the most remote parts of to cost and you from here. these researches are off to what may well turn out to be a sensation they know that something unusual has been found on the banks of one of the rivers in the country's north the scientists want to see whether the find is indeed as unique because they have been led to believe if it turns out to be true the scientific community will get an intriguing glimpse to what life on earth was like thousands of years ago.

expedition will travel across western chukotka a northeastern yakutia a wealth of remains of extinct animals dating back to the ice age is hidden beneath the permafrost none of the fossils and tusks have been found here. however the find that the researches are after is something special a prehistoric bison completely mummified by nature. of which some forty mummified animal remains have been found in the world since biology became a science two hundred years ago some twenty of them are more or less in good condition all the others are just fragments legs skulls and the like are only two bison have been found over the years one in alaska and the other here you know from what i've seen that much more is left of this one this is why it is more valuable for research which is. some time ago geologists found in a rave mammoth fossils in this out of the way part of russia. it was the world's

first and most large scale expedition of its kind scientists believe the area is full of relics from the late pleistocene e pok that period came to an end some eleven thousand years ago at approximately the same time the last remaining mammoths died out on the rest of the continent leaving behind that tusks from a kind. of material which in this organic tooth tissue called ten team is really remarkable stuff at a good and this is the last front tooth from a mammoth. it was an extraordinary animal the people who live thousands of years ago were aware of its useful properties. they use the stuff to make the first tools utensils even works of aunts or people have always been fascinated by the material that we thank you. but you cut courageous village of a new risk as a population of about five hundred and to situated on the banks of the mali. and

really river. nearly all the villages that spend the brief summer in the tundra anti-god tending reindeer hunting and fishing from here the expedition heads for the site where the primitive bison was found. to divide the shore to do what the man who steers the boat tells you it was the propeller made brush against the riverbed in shallow places but if i happens don't panic but if people know the lay of the land well and they'll tell you what to do if need be it stood you. good here you can easily get around by water people mostly use light white boats for the purpose but explorers should be aware of the difficulties that local rivers have in store. there are geologists biologists and paleontologists among expedition members travelling to this remote cold environment has been

a cherished ambition for many of them. since its formation several thousand years ago the mallee and we river has kept many secrets about the ice age in no way in its banks. is the clinic i see there is an abundance of animal fossils here even if people were to come from all over to dig them up it would take several years to finish the job bring us. the expedition camps out on a patch of land by the river. the cliff where the bison mummy was found is across it it's some local soul the animal when they were travelling past the place by boat at that moment a huge chunk of permafrost collapsed into the water to reveal the mom of five corpse. the fine was immediately reported to fyodor should love skiing he is officially licensed to collect paleontological objects in this area it was fielder who organized the expedition and prepared

a camp for field research. but she would get no shit today i think that we need to inspect the place and just relax a bit before we would like to move to that side. of the beauty moderate he worked in the evening everybody will come up with a plan of their own and will correct everything with pretty. tagging along with the expedition is our county should love ski both the son of the organizer and the youngest member of the group before the others arrived he had already gathered a huge number of ancient fossils found in the area the group has taken a lively interest in his collection. this is a bison horn. preserved because it was kept in a natural freezer. thanks a lot arkady let me shake your hands well done. that for another two days and then we'll send you back home. at the moment this one squad interesting it's a mammoth it's still points are divided into three sections which points to its

very old age such plates are often found in early elephants. the only mammoth is an extinct member of the elephant family during the ice age woolly mammoths lived in most areas of eurasia or north america. they isn't trunks were smaller than those of elephants but their tusks were much larger. it is speculated that such mammoths lived in groups led by older females current theories suggest that they became extinct due to climate change and over hunting. the last moments left in the late pleistocene ipad. today visitors are free to take a stroll in the park dating back to the place to see an era it's the result of the efforts of scientists. who fenced off one hundred sixty square kilometers of

forests tundra shrubs lakes and swamps the park is situated seventy kilometers from the expedition's field company in your courses ne the arctic ocean is only one hundred fifty kilometers away. to the water in the bog that was here fifteen years ago never dried up today there is grass here is of course has become grass when it is the least twenty twenty five centimeters long the figure for a bison is fourteen centimeters it can be assumed therefore the bison nibbled at the lower grass level as the trail behind a horse's. zimm of aim is to reconstruct what he calls the mouth step. this ecosystem was predominant in the arctic of the late place to seen huge herds of large herbivores such as mammoths woolly rhinos reindeer horses bison used to

graze here. why many of the species died out approximately ten thousand years ago is still unclear another ice age came to an end around the same time it gave way to swamps and tundra the ecosystem of mt to steps in the north had completely changed and she would use you today's climate to you would suit mammoth steps admirably i.q. and seen my mind to animals creating pastures for themselves when you needed these horses and bison hadn't seen one another for twelve thousand years but their genetic memory tells them after just a couple months of that they do you know one another and you will recall the mammoth two are there they come that's the least thing we want they'll do are everything around here. two members of the expedition i live missy and field of their job is to look for mammoth tusks

eleven field who are together almost all the time when it comes to looking for fossils they parted ways near one wants to share his secrets with the other. there is steep slopes all along the bank everybody knows that mammoth tells can be found here although many people are on the lookout if you actually find any obviously have got some secrets to keep what you need in his job his determination . the first step is a careful inspection of the steep slopes from a boat to mali annuity is a tributary of the river a column on each spring rain and water from melted snow flood the tributaries over flowing water washes the bank away forcing permafrost to retreat as a result big chunks of rock tumble down into the water to expose ice bound knishes deep inside. the mcdonald's not first of all you must know what it looks like.

you should look forward everywhere. i dream about finding a mammoth's goal. that's my aim you know after all others have found such things. only people whose job is looking for tusks know the telltale signs of where they hide shallow waters of the best place for tusk come to. with a great stroke of luck has found a tusk of impressive size. this one is easy to carry it only weighs above thirty kilograms. rain has brought work of the burial sites to an abrupt halt life in the come as

come to a stop so. when

there was a lot of sunshine in the grass and flowers grow stronger with each passing. one the icing with the bison melted away the find animal was instantly moved into an ice house. and we think we're about to enter a unique place but it's a gift to people from the northern climates permafrost makes it possible to store food if it's a remarkable place there's nothing special about this small ice house but it is unique nonetheless you know we're going to see something even more exciting in

science. the corridor and sells the ice house will hollowed out by hand inside an enormous ice formation the walls and floor i'm a device each year there sprayed with water ventilation is checked at the same time this makes it possible to maintain the low temperature and humidity. it's been usually warm this summer in chicago. by permafrost began to degrade and rapidly melt away and we feared we might lose the bison buried in it. consequently members of my team moved it to this ice house as fast as possible. what would have lead specialists instantly try to find out what caused the animal's death the bisons tail stands upright instead of being pressed against the body. this in direct sign may indicate that quickly suffocated many others have theories

if they're right. about what was only sure that they might have died when the spinal cord or skull was suddenly fractured. in other words it might have been buried under falling rock or more also it could have fallen through a crack and was coming up a girl i would store when we were moving it into this so i was saddened to see that one of its horns had been severely damaged i do you know rourke there's a crack at the bottom of the boat. and that means that the skull must have suffered a serious injury. either this happened after its death or it was the cause of its. neighbor what that the bullet chances are something helped it landed a natural trap. but it's possible that we know that lions were around here at the time it's true permafrost has an excellent job of preserving the bison soft tissues and even characteristic smell. pretty strong smell there yes it smells like

a cow from just. as far as can be seen there are no major injuries of the bisons body according to a tentative assessment the bison died during the pleistocene period its body has spent around thirty thousand years in permafrost than it took usual floored scientists are delighted to see that here the bison is in the sort of environment that existed thousands of years ago but they will do what you want to some of them are working on the bank today. he would go there out to get as much information as they can and when he was there on the front line as it were and what he would get. on the summer heat was radically changed the shape of the cliff where the prehistoric bison was found to scientists to blunt that boat not far off on the five mammoths burial place. with me this is where the normally fully poisonous. as found we need to establish when and how the animal died and the natural environment

there was typical of that period with with you agree. the cleft contains clay with peat streaks in it this is the best material for radio carbon measurements radio carbon dating will help establish the period when the bison lived clay accumulated during cold periods where as peat formed when the climate became warm. or she was disturbed this is pete here you can find anything you like dross insects and little twigs. from the bison may have been in a bog like this one but you. and will need to find out whether this kind of peas. is also on the other side of the bank or. do you think the ripples in this formation date back to those times and i'm sure they do it highlights the relief of

the period between the period when our bison lived. in a lake with ripples of that the bison was in a nice situation in one of the pete's top players one thing is crystal clear it was not a natural death otherwise insects would be to not the bisons body scientists speculate that after the bison died mud quickly enveloped its body and saved it from predators and the natural deep freeze prevented it from decomposition. it's possible that our bison might have been swept away by floodwaters and brought here. that you were there. it must have been too weak to resist the flow at that for. a thorough also the small amount of peat here points to a boarding process is about watching it with the body was in fact in a swamp as a voyage so he might have drowned in it or go at you.

ancient fossils mouth tusks found in this area are unique materials for bone collars. this is a standard but workshop it contains a wealth of natural specimens and manmade figurines. moment. tusks more than any other bones. they are valuable if only because they were underground for thousands of years before somebody chanced upon them. you know and the objects we make from them will survive for hundreds of years to delight people. therefore we treasure mammoth tusks of. bone called his contour fold to make mistakes a full tea cup cannot be undone all compositions are unique works of art it is impossible to fake or imitate each object costs

a lot of money nearly all of the world's monex connoisseurs and wealthy collectors own traditional figurines of mammoths made from tusks the moment the mammoth tusks and fossils are best preserved in permafrost the woody frozen earth begins thawing it just decomposes. it was in a photo shoot but just series riding in the permafrost like this one are absolutely intact because when the with a sort of misused. this is one of the permafrost areas. a scientist founded the northeastern research station the rocky bank of the colin model river it takes four and a half hours by end to get to the nearest city ziman flora tree attracts scientists college students from all over the world. they're interested in studies of permafrost and mammoths and of a. the fact that the station is far removed from civilization nearly every summer

college students come here from the united states to work and there is international projects. where i live is actually claim around as well but where you go to school the city says that. nothing like. pleistocene park is one of sir gazin offs most ambitious projects in recent years he has been doing his best to bring in various species of both of. these young elks are in for a long journey from a small pen to freedom. easy easier if you can take you forward to showcase there you go. with your. view. looking forward that's it. well done

a few good years if they've been around for a month one of the oaks was very sick and we had to work hard to know our scene back to health. now that there are fewer mosquitoes here they're out skin to be released into the pork. place to seem pock is at the very heart of permafrost forty kilometers from the station. during the summer it can only be reached by boat the elks are transferred to the motorboat with most cat. is enough is always at the wheel on such occasions. this is not the first time that he has used this small motorboat to transport tunnels. as the place. live as the

world's least accessible point economically speaking or the method of transport costs more than anywhere else we brought the musk buffaloes by motor boat from bronco island. the young elks of become accustomed to humans and learn to trust them for that reason they patiently wait for the chance to go free. puck staff carry the animals by hand from the bank to the pen. but before they are led into the wild it will go through a period of a climatized nation. so gays him off believe that herbivores can survive in these rigorous conditions moreover they can radically change the landscape. of the boat with a good think should be an open landscape he would scatter tribes bush is for trees

tiny briggs' a lake sent the stream to grass why do they mow the grass in the parks you may ask that's because there were millions of herbivores in the old days your that the way you have a cup ras was their staple food it's the sort of landscape that man is used to i'm comfortable here i'm trying to recreate the natural environment in which my distant ancestors lived. so cool the arctic steps existed in the north thousands of years ago an abundance of food attracted numbness and other her before. early man quickly followed suit. today most of the people living in this rugged region of mine precious metals.

this is a gold mining field in chukotka in russia's far east ironically it is because of the gold industry that now myths have been found scraping off the top layer of permafrost in search of mineral wealth revealed these prehistoric names but sometimes they emerge naturally. enough that people don't know why permafrost sometimes looks to forms it's because there's a foreign object lying underneath which has been there for tens or even hundreds of thousands of years and all the sudden permafrost begins spirit out in the end the object shows up in the midst of tundra. at a pace of several millimeters a year. over the course of many years the majority of unique prehistoric objects have been found in the permafrost they have been dug up in the russian far east

altai on the southern europe's. these remains of a woolly rhino case there bison among the five horse legs and a complete one year old mammoth give us an idea of what these prehistoric animals look like. the fossils of primitive predators and herbivores provide unique material for studying animal d.n.a. from the ice age. the number five to called kabul is widely different from old known fragments of prehistoric hoofed animals. scientists of concluded that it is the world's most complete mummy of a bison it is much better preserved the blue baby the famous mummy of a bison found in alaska. at the summer. this is

a true scientific sensation such finds are absolutely unique when something similar is found it is just fragments in most cases but this is a perfect carcass of a museum we can get an idea of what it looked like what was inside his body and what he ate shortly before his death and much more. the next scientific expedition to this cold harsh environment may well result in another sensational find remains of a cave lion been found close to the site where the chilcote kubel died.

tonight the world's finances get a grim fall comes from the i.m.f. is europe's debt taken from italy's credit downgrade and the u.s. is accused of being too hasty with cuts. just before the palestinians appeal for a seat at the u.n. israeli military forces against pro palestine supporters but the rest is coming from the other side. growing fears of violence as israeli settlers take the no into the own hands and march towards had a sting in villages join me in a few moments and i'll bring you more. new york president obama seeks to boost libya's new leadership at the general assembly by pointing out progress in the country but nonetheless questions over whether the actions of libya complied with the u.n. resolution long.