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Siberia’s Yakutian ‘Hellmouth’ crater has exposed 200,000 years of history
FEBRUARY 28, 20171:01PM
‘Hellmouth' Batagaika crater in Siberia's Yakutian peninsula. It’s 85m tall edges are exposing the remains of ancient tundras and forests. Picture: Alexander Gabyshev / Research Institute of Applied Ecology of the North
Jamie Seidel
News Corp Australia Network
SIBERIA’s enormous ‘hellmouth’ crater in the melting permafrost is growing fast — and it’s opening a portal to a 200,000-year-old world.
The Batgaika crater, known to the local Yakutian people as the ‘doorway to the underworld’, is one of the largest of a growing number of pits collapsing across the Siberian landscape as the ice beneath the surface turns to slush — and methane gas.
But this crater in particular offers some form of silver lining.
It’s revealing eons of climate change in the region, along with long-buried animal carcasses and petrified forests.
The 1km wide, 85m deep crater is growing at the rate of 10m to 30m a year as the ice about its edges gives way. Researchers say it’s also getting gradually deeper.
But a study in the science journal Quarternary Research says that, along with its ominous release of greenhouse gas, the stratified layers of the crater’s sides are releasing immense historical climate data.
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