An Expedition That Never Was-Benkendorf's Expedition to the River Indigirka

Abstract

Among the numerous scientific problems presented by the Quaternary period in the history of Northern Siberia there is one which stands out among others. This is the problem of the mammoth, the time it lived, the conditions of its habitat and the reasons for its becoming extinct. For over a century now this problem has been discussed on and off in our own and in foreign literature. Scientists were particularly interested in the question of the mammoth's sources of food because the solution of this question would tell us more about vegetation and natural conditions of that time. The treatment of this particular question has been ambiguous. Prior to the publication in 1914 by V. N. Sukachev of his 'Analysis of the vegetable remains of food in the stomach of the mammoth carcass found on the river Berezovka in the Yakut region', it was held that mammoths fed on conifers (needles, cones and young offshoots). After careful analysis of the contents of the stomach of the Berezovka mammoth V. N. Sukachev established that 'The mam?