Once
in September in the 1799 Even hunter of mammoths tusks Osip Shumahov came back
from a work along the right bank of the river Lena. Crossing the stream Bikovskiy
he saw a huge block of ice which was coming off from a bank breakaway. Inside it
there was something black, but that – it was unintelligible. The next year Osip visited
this place again, but ice block has yet not thew. He returned in the year and saw at
last the whole mammoth body inside the ice, but it was impossible to reach it. Only in
summer in 1804 the ice completely thew, and on the sandy bank appeared the huge
mammoth body. Osip Shumahov cut off huge tusks and carried them to sell in
city. The rich Yakutiyan merchant Roman Boltunov baught tusks, he paid for
them the large on those times money - 50 roubles.
In two years the zoologist from St.-Petersburg M. I. Adams arrived in
Yakutsk. Boltunov told to the scientist about the mammoth and even drawn it.
M. I. Adams employed the workers and went to the place of the find.
To this time the body almost all was eaten up by polar foxes, wolves and bears. The
researchers found only the bones of the skeleton with rests of the dried and
frown skin and of the wool wisps. The dried eyes, one ear, the foots and the brain of the
animal has miracle saved. All this was assembled, cleared and sent to the capital, where
the zoologists began study the remains. In the 1808 M. I. Adams installed the first
whole skeleton of a mammoth and shown it in the Academy of Sciences. The
academicians decided to exhibit the skeleton for review of audience in the
academic museum.
This was a skeleton of the male of 65-70 years old, which lived 35 800 years ago.
Now it is installed in St. Petersburg in the Zoological museum of the Academy of Sciences.
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