ST. PETERSBURG, February 21. /TASS/. A well-preserved skull of a woolly rhinoceros, which became extinct about 8-14 thousand years ago, was confiscated from smugglers at the Kaliningrad customs. After necessary procedures on the skull, it was given to the museum on the Krasin icebreaker in St. Petersburg, the Museum of the World Ocean's Director General Svetlana Sivkova told TASS.
"The skull is in a very good condition, it comes from the last glaciation epoch. Somebody has tried to smuggle it through the Kaliningrad Region, through the customs. The customs arrested the skull, sent it to the North-Western Department of the Ministry of Culture - and we have received this valuable exhibit just recently," she said.
The skull is exposed to the public - it has been placed under a glass case in a historical cabin onboard the Krasin icebreaker. That very woolly rhinoceros could have lived in the territory of the modern Kaliningrad Region, the expert said, adding this hypothesis still requires additional studies.
Woolly rhinoceroses were widespread on the plains of Europe and Asia during the Ice Age and became extinct due to climate change 8-14 thousand years ago. Most often, their remains are found in the Russian North and Siberia. The woolly rhinoceros had two horns. The front horn could be 1.5 m long, and the other one usually was not longer than 0.5 m. The big mammals in the ancient times were not much different in size from modern rhinoceroses.
The Krasin (until 1927, the Svyatogor) was an Arctic icebreaker of the Russian and Soviet fleets. It was named after revolutionary, diplomat and engineer Leonid Krasin. The icebreaker became known all over the world as the ship that saved General Umberto Nobile's expedition, when the explorers' airship crashed in the Arctic in 1928. In the 1950s, the icebreaker underwent a major upgrade at shipyards in the GDR and continued the service until the early 1990s, when it was converted into a museum. The first exhibition opened there in 1995, and, since 2004 the icebreaker is a branch of the Museum of the World Ocean.