Tuesday, September 18, 2007

Climate change good for some?

For some people a warming planet may bring benefits, for example, this as reported by Reuters, which explains how the melting permafrost of the northern Siberian plains is exposing mammoth and other fossil bones.

"Private collectors and scientific institutes will pay huge sums for the right specimen, and bone-prospectors like Vatagin have turned this region, eight time zones from Moscow, into a paleontological Klondyke."

It sounds like a major money making opportunity for the tiny "Yukagir ethnic group, whose numbers have dwindled to about 800 people". I have to confess that I'd never heard of them before, but bone hunting sounds much more interesting than reindeer herding.

1 comment:

Emma said...

800 good. 6 billion less so.
I'll have a bottle of whatever these guys are on!