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From The Times
September 19, 2007

Mammoth finds mean big money for the bone hunters of the Arctic Circle

Alexander Svalov holds a mammoth bone in the storage room of the Ice Age Museum in Moscow

CHERSKY Prehistoric bones are not hard to find in the northernmost reaches of Siberia. The permafrost is thawing so rapidly that in some places in the tundra, the bones of lions, mammoths and woolly rhinos poke out through the soil every few metres. The storage room of the Ice Age Museum in Moscow, above, where Alexander Svalov holds a mammoth bone, is packed with examples.

The company that runs the museum holds government licences allowing it to excavate and export prehistoric relics. Private collectors and scientific institutes – from the United States to South Korea – will pay huge sums for the right specimen.

A well-preserved tusk, Mr Svalov says, can sell to private collectors for up to $20,000 (£10,000), while a reconstructed mammoth skeleton can fetch between $150,000 and $250,000.

Bone prospectors such as Alexander Vatagin have turned this region of Siberia, eight time zones from Moscow, into a palaeontological Klondyke. “Last year someone was paid 800,000 roubles (£16,000) for a mammoth head with two tusks,” he said. He employs fishermen and reindeer herders from the tiny Yukagir ethnic group, whose keen eyes and local knowledge help them to find the best artefacts. (Reuters)

The existence of these fossils in Siberia has been known for decades, proving conclusively that the climate there was mild in the not too distant past, before the last Ice Age.

So, it was warm, then it froze, and it's been getting warm again for thousands of years before the industrial revolution.

Doesn't this tell the CO2-obsessed climate modellers something? I wish they would look up from their computer screens and read some history, some geography, a little paleontology and most of all some real meteorology, not computer modelling.

Peter Lloyd, BLACKER HILL, South Yorkshire

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