Quaternary Mammal Collections in the Museums of Yakutsk (Eastern Siberia, Yakutia, Russia)

The presence of permafrost creates unique conditions for preservation not only of skeletal parts but also of parts of carcasses of extinct animals. A significant part of the permafrost fossils dating to the Quaternary has been found in the territory of the Sakha (Yakutia) Republic that occupies most of Eastern Siberia. The most interesting and spectacular collections of fossil mammals belonging to the Quaternary are kept in the museums of Yakutsk and are briefly reviewed here. The main parts of these collections are housed in the following museums: the Regional Museum of Nature, the Geological Museum of the Institute of Geology of Diamonds and Precious Metals, Siberian Division, Russian Academy of Sciences and the Mammoth Museum. In this paper we describe a right femur of a small woolly mammoth, Mammuthus primigenius, in the collection of the Mammoth Museum in Yakutsk, showing that small woolly mammoths already existed more than 48,000 BP on the continent of Eurasia.