At the end of the Pleistocene era - 10,000 years ago - woolly mammoths, rhinoceroses and tigers might have watched our progress from the riverside, and herds of horses, bison, musk-ox and Siberian antelope would have roamed the meadows and savannah to either side.
. . .
Ten thousand years ago, as the climate warmed, the grass gave way to moss and forest, habitats disappeared, and the large mammals went with them.
Or so the theory goes. But Sergei reckons climate had little to do with it and that all these animals would be thriving here now, if it hadn't been for man overhunting them to extinction.
And to prove his case, he is turning 160 sq km of Siberian "desert" back into the teeming wilderness of the late Ice Age, complete with grazing pastures and animals that have not been seen here for millennia.
Also posted about here. Errrr, down past the Kinky post.