Russian scientists have proposed critical explanations and mechanisms for the unique preservation of Pleistocene mammal remains (bones and particularly their soft tissues) in the permafrost of northeastern Siberia during Würm- Valdai- Wisconsin. The nineteenth century ideas concerning underground ice in the permafrost of Siberia and buried glaciers were refuted completely by the middle of the twentieth century. Instead a hypothesis was developed for syngenetic and epigenetic formation of underground ice veins. Extreme physical (ecological) processes in the permafrost created unique taphonomic responses, because the conditions of death of the animals and the burial of faunal remains were sharply diff erent from those in other landscapes of the Northern Hemisphere. Recent taphonomic views of paleofaunal researchers regarding concrete events and the causes of death of animals and the preservation of their remains in the Quaternary permafrost of ‘Arctida’ and the Arctic as a whole are considered.

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Deinsea

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Natuurhistorisch Museum Rotterdam

N.K. Vereshchagin, & S.V. Tomirdiaro. (1999). Taphonomic research in permafrost regions: a survey of past and present studies in the former Soviet Union. Deinsea, 6(1), 187–198.