SALEKHARD, RUSSIA—Scientists conducted an MRI scan of the birch-bark coffin discovered several weeks ago in the Zeleny Yar necropolis, located near the Siberian Arctic, and then opened it. “The remains belong to a boy, six to seven years old. We suppose it was a boy because we have found a small bronze ax with the body, and some sharp tool, which we cannot identify yet,” Alexander Gusev of the Center for the Study of the Arctic told The Siberian Times. Like other burials in the Zeleny Yar necropolis, the body was naturally mummified by the permafrost and the copper or bronze plates that had been fastened to the face, chest, and abdomen with leather straps. “The body was wrapped in two layers of fur, one layer is reindeer hide, with long and stiff hair. The other layer is softer, we will be able to say more clearly which animal it was after the analysis in Ekaterinburg,” he added. The child had also been buried with a bronze bear-shaped pendant and bronze temple rings. To read more about archaeology in Siberia, go to "Fortress of Solitude."
