Jarkhov's Icy Tomb

“Baby Mammoth Heads To Paris.“  That’s not a headline you see every day — at least not since mammoths became extinct about 10,000 year ago.  This week’s press announcement of a frozen prehistoric mammal’s transport from the Russian Arctic to a French research center caught our eye because it involved polar fossil collector Bernard Buigues.  We first learned of him ten years ago on Wintergreen’s backpack expedition across Siberia’s premiere wildlife refuge, Wrangel Island.

Wrangel, an isolated mountain realm in the East Siberian Sea, is home to the Asian arctic’s largest concentrations of polar bears, walrus, snow owls and snow geese.  And because it escaped the ravages of the glacial epochs, Wrangel was also the last realm of wooly mammoths, who were still merrily chewing their cuds on Wrangel’s mossy tundra just 3,700 years ago.  Consequently, Wrangel is happy hunting grounds for archeologists seeking bones and tusks to piece together the story of these mythic 12-foot-tall, 10-ton beasts that once ruled the northern hemisphere.

Lifting Jarkhov

On our two-week Wrangel trek, an encounter with one of these researchers, Alexei Tikhonov,  led to a curious exchange. Our daughter Bria, 14 at the time, was excited to tell him about her own encounter with mammoths.  Just prior to our trip, her Ely High School science class had watched the Discovery Channel film “Raising the Mammoth.”  A blockbuster documentary at the time, it explained how Bernard Buigues had allegedly found a ‘holy grail’ in the world of mammoth paleontology — a fully intact adult mammoth.  The film depicted crews painstakingly extracting the mammoth from the Siberian permafrost.  Well, it actually showed them extracting a 23-ton cube of dirt which, in the film’s final nail-biter scene, is wrestled from the ground by a ‘mammoth’ Russian helicopter churning and chugging overhead.  Viewers are left to believe that scientists chose not to expose any of the mammoth’s body until they could thaw it later under controlled conditions.  Two symmetrical tusks protruding from the cube of frozen mud lent authenticity to their claims.

Paul & Sue on Wrangel

Upon hearing Bria’s tale, Tikhonov smiled softly at her and said, “Now let me tell you the rest of the story.”  He explained that he too had gotten caught up in the excitement of Buigues’ discovery of what came to be known as the “Jarkov” mammoth.  In fact, he fact worked on the dig, at least until the whole project became a bit suspect.  Buigues had convinced the Discovery Channel that his discovery was so monumental that they sent a charter jet and film crew to Siberia.  But as archeologists including Tikhonov dug ever closer to Jarhov’s entombed carcass, they realized there was little or nothing there.  nonetheless, since millions had been budgeted for the film, the Discovery Channel announced that the show must go on.  And it did.  But not with Tikhonov.  He quit when two symmetrical tusks that had been found at a different site were “glued” to the 23-ton cube that had been chainsawed from the tundra.

Is there anything in the block? We may never know. To this day it sits in Buigues’ ice cave storage facility on Russia’s arctic coast.  He says he’s still waiting the development of suitable technologies that will allow him to thaw the frozen mud block without damaging whatever may be inside it.

In the meantime, Discovery Channel made millions on their film “Raising the Mammoth.” It’s still in circulation, though some scientists have decried this endeavor as a ruse tantamount to that of the “Piltdown Man.”

Jarkhov at Target

And Jarkov?  Well he did turn up — in a Target Store near our home in Ely, Minnesota.  A few weeks after our return from Wrangel, my wife Susan was shopping for a birthday gift when she spotted a familiar picture on a box containing a stuffed wooly mammoth toy.  There it was — the block of ice with tusks ticking out and a mighty helicopter lifting it from the Siberian tundra.  “Want to the snuggle with Jarkov tonight?” said the slogan on the back of the box, which as marketed by the Discovery Channel.

Our soft, cuddly Jarhov still sits on a display shelf in our lodge, patiently waiting to find out whether her real self sits inside Buigues’ frozen ice lock. Who knows — perhaps she’s the mom of the baby mammoth that’s now on its way to Paris!

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