In Siberia’s northernmost reaches, high up in the Arctic Circle, the changing temperature is thawing out the permafrost to reveal the bones of prehistoric animals like mammoths, woolly rhinos and lions that have been buried for thousands of years.

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

Prehistoric bones are not very hard to find. The permafrost is thawing and breaking up so rapidly that in certain places in the tundra, every few meters (yards) bones poke out through the soil. Some just lie on the surface.

If someone is lucky, a local can earn 200,000 roubles ($7,800) in just one day. Normally it would take a year to earn that much.

The bones make their way into museums in places like the United States and South Korea. Now promising new markets are opening up in emerging economies like China too.

[Read](http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/20841327/ “Read the Story”) (Reuters via MSNBC)