SAVE THE YUNNYUGEN LOCALITY IN YAKUTIA!

Dear scientists, students, schoolchildren and other residents of Siberia, all of Russia and other countries in the world!

We appeal to you, who are not indifferent to the preservation of nature and its fossil remains, to support this open letter to the President of the Russian Federation, the Government of the Russian Federation, the Head of the Sakha (Yakutia) Republic, and the Government of the Sakha Republic, with the demand of an immediate ban on the barbaric and completely illegal method of industrial-scale “excavations” of paleontological remains, which has nothing to do with legal licensed acquisition of collection material and traditional crafts of the indigenous people of the Arctic.

In the valley of the Yana River, which flows through the vast territory of the Sakha Republic beyond the Arctic Circle, nature created a unique place – the Yunnyugen locality.

Discovered in 1885 by the expedition of the Imperial Russian Academy of Sciences, it contains tens and hundreds of thousands of paleontological remains dated to the last global glaciation. Here, teeth and bones (often bearing tendons, muscles, skin and fir), horns, fragments of skeletons, and sometimes whole mummies of ancient animals, including birds and small rodents, are perfectly preserved. Everyone knows woolly mammoths and rhinos, fossil bisons, horses, deer, antelopes and their constant pursuers – cave lions, bears, hyenas, wolves, wolverines and other carnivores. Not only remains of all these extinct animals but also the products of their vital activity in the form of excrements and plants they ate, together with microorganisms, are preserved here in a frozen form. These are priceless pages of the fossil record of the Earth and one of the oldest genetic databases in the world. According to some indications, about 45 thousand years ago, Stone Age hunters also left traces of their presence here (Bunge-Toll locality).

It is even sadder to describe the fact that the Yunnyugen locality is now threatened with complete destruction under the streams of water from fire-pumps used by hundreds of modern illegal “hunters” who cause uncontrolled destruction of permafrost deposits, in order to obtain mammoth tusks and rhino horns. As a carving raw material and medicinal compounds, these natural products are still popular and extremely valuable in China and other Oriental countries. Other fossil remains are scattered everywhere, like abandoned and useless items. On the slopes and on the bottom of the small valley, where the Yunnyugen locality is situated, they are under constant destructive processes – they crack under the ruthless Yakutian frost and the sun, they are getting wet under the rain and are soaked in mud, and they are falling apart under boots and are burning in the bonfires of “mammoth-tusk hunters”. Hundreds and thousands of unique skulls, horns and other parts of the animal skeletons from the Ice Age are quickly disappearing. It looks as if from the distant past the ghosts of mammoths and their companions roar, moo, bleat and howl, calling for help from us – people of the 21st century – who are responsible for the significant damage already done to the natural and cultural heritage of humankind!

The unique Yunnyugen locality requires immediate protection! It can become a research and tourist center of world significance. In order to do this, it is urgently necessary to give it the status of protected geological and paleontological natural monument of all-Russian significance. Our children and grandchildren must see with their own eyes all the splendor of their native planet, both in the present form and stored in geological layers.

Only a comprehensive study of such a vast natural archive will allow us to reconstruct in detail the ancient ecosystems of Yakutia and Northern Eurasia as a whole, and to come closer to the solution of the fundamental problem of the mammoth fauna’s extinction. Based on this knowledge, we will be able to better predict how nature could change in the next dozens and hundreds of years; what might happen if global warming continues; and how it will affect the flora and fauna, including us, humans. We will also be able to answer today’s urgent question: how dangerous are ancient, but still viable bacteria and viruses if they will be freed from the captivity of the “permafrost”.

It is necessary to understand that Yunnyugen is unique message from the bowels of the Mother Earth, and its current state is both a warning and challenge to us – people, representatives of the species Homo sapiens, rational creatures!?

Signatures:

Leshchinskiy S.V., Doctor of Geological and Mineral. Sciences, Professor of the Tomsk State University, Tomsk, Russia;

Goncharov A.E., Doctor of Med. Sciences, Professor of the I.I. Mechnikov North-Western State Medical University, St. Petersburg, Russia;

Grigoryev S.E., Ph.D. of Biol. Sci., Leading Researcher of the North-Eastern Federal University, Yakutsk, Russia;

Cheprasov M.Yu., Ph.D. of Biol. Sciences, Senior Researcher of the North-Eastern Federal University, Yakutsk, Russia;

Zenin V.N., Doctor of History, Head of the Centre “Cenozoic Geochronology” of the Institute of Archaeology and Ethnography SB RAS, Novosibirsk, Russia;

Anoykin A.A., Doctor of History, Senior Researcher of the Institute of Archaeology and Ethnography SB RAS, Novosibirsk, Russia;

Kuzmin Ya.V., Doctor of Geography Sci., Leading Researcher of the V.S. Sobolev Institute of Geology and Mineralogy SB RAS, Novosibirsk, Russia;

Zolnikov I.D., Doctor of Geological and Mineral. Sciences, Professor of the Novosibirsk State University, Novosibirsk, Russia;

Skutschas P.P., Doctor of Biol. Sciences, Associate Professor of the St. Petersburg State University, St. Petersburg, Russia;

Krivoshapkin A.I., Doctor of History, Acting Director of the Institute of Archaeology and Ethnography SB RAS, Novosibirsk;

Baryshnikov G.F., Doctor of Biol. Sciences, Chief Researcher of the Zoological Institute RAS, St. Petersburg, Russia;

Krivonogov S.K., Doctor of Geological and Mineral. Sciences, Leading Researcher of the V.S. Sobolev Institute of Geology and Mineralogy SB RAS, Novosibirsk, Russia;

Shpansky A.V., Doctor of Geological and Mineral. Sciences, Associate Professor of the Tomsk State University, Tomsk, Russia;

Kosintsev P.A., Ph.D. of Biol. Sciences, Senior Researcher of the Institute of Plant and Animal Ecology UB RAS, Yekaterinburg, Russia;

Boeskorov G.G., Doctor of Biol. Sciences, Chief Researcher of the Diamond and Precious Metal Geology Institute of the SB RAS, Yakutsk, Russia;

Agadjanyan A.K., prof., Doctor of Biol. Sciences, Chief Researcher of A.A. Borissiak Paleontological Institute RAS, Moscow, Russia;

Nadachowski A., Professor, Doctor Hab. of Biol. Sciences, Professor of the Institute of Systematics and Evolution of Animals PAS, Kraków, Poland;

Stefaniak K., Doctor Hab. of Biol. Sciences, Assistant Professor of the University of Wrocław, Wrocław, Poland;

Haynes G., Ph.D., Foundation Professor of Anthropology (Emeritus) of the University of Nevada, Reno, USA;

Bazhenova Ya.A., Ph.D. of Geological and Mineral. Sciences, Associate Professor of the Tomsk State University, Tomsk, Russia;

Ivantsov S.V., Ph.D. of Geological and Mineral. Sciences, Associate Professor of the Tomsk State University, Tomsk, Russia.

Additional resources:

Film “The mammoth-tusk hunters” (in Russian):

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gnRgKoz5vRs

 

The shortened version of the film “The mammoth-tusk hunters” (in English):

https://www.rferl.org/a/mammoth-tusks-big-profits-lost-history/30258379.html

 

Essays with more details from other sources:

In English: https://siberiantimes.com/science/casestudy/news/scientists-in-fierce-stand-against-bone-hunters-at-mammoth-graveyard/

In Polish: https://www.donald.pl/artykuly/pZpH7ioF/walka-naukowcow-z-lowcami-klow-o-cmentarzyska-mamutow-na-syberii

In Russian: http://www.1sn.ru/232763.html

http://www.tsu.ru/news/uchenye-tgu-i-spbgu-khotyat-sozdat-geologicheskiy-/