SIMFEROPOL, July 12. /TASS/. Workers building the Tauride federal road in Crimea have discovered a spacious solutional cave that contains the remnants of bodies of pre-Glacial Age mammals, including mastodons and mammoths, the press service of VAD construction company said.
It also said the works at the section of the road adjoining the cave had been stopped and the builders had sealed the entrance to it.
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Sergei Aksyonov, the Prime Minister of Russia’s constituent Republic of Crimea tweeted on Wednesday the cave had been discovered near the township of Zuya, Belogorsk district. The contractor suspended the construction activities to allow researchers to inspect the hollow, as experts say there is a risk of a slide of the roadway.
Scientists presume the cave may contain the traces of activity of prehistoric people and may also help understand what Crimea was like before the Glacial Age.
Dr. Alexander Sergeyev, the President of the Russian Academy of Sciences has told reports researchers believe the cave that was found at the depth of fifteen meters below the surface has a ramified network of corridors linking it to other concavities.
"It was speleologists from the department of geography of the Crimean Federal University, not archeologists, who made the discovery," he said. "It’s true that the cave contains many artefacts and bones of animals. All of this should be studied."
Archeologists from Moscow are currently working together with Crimean researchers at site, Dr. Sergeyev said.
Sergei Aksyonov tweeted that the information about the discovery had provoked a number of attempts on the part of people unrelated either to construction or to the research sphere to get into the cave and therefore the construction company had to block the entrance there in order to prevent possible accidents.
The first section of the Tauride [Tavrida] federal road from the city of Kerch to Simferopol is to open for regular traffic in December 2018. The commissioning of all the 250 km of the road ending in Sevastopol has been scheduled for December 2020.