The largest thermokarst basin in the world. Its depth reach­es 100 meters, and its length is almost 1.5 km. Pre­vi­ous­ly, there was taiga in its place, but then the for­est was cut down to clear a road for all-ter­rain vehi­cles. It soon became clear that this should not have been done. With­out trees to hold back the melt­ing of per­mafrost, the earth began to sub­side. Researchers believe that the vol­ume of the Bata­gay crater increas­es by about a mil­lion cubic meters every year. Two-thirds of this fig­ure is due to melt­ing ice. Russ­ian sci­en­tists have named the melt­ing of per­mafrost as the rea­son for the rapid expan­sion of the crater. It is caused by the warm­ing observed in the Verk­hoy­an­sk region: the aver­age air tem­per­a­ture has increased sig­nif­i­cant­ly com­pared to the pre­vi­ous lev­el.

A unique nat­ur­al object that allows you to look hun­dreds of thou­sands of years into the past, reveal­ing the secrets of the cli­mate and ancient fau­na. Sci­en­tists are active­ly study­ing this object to under­stand how the cli­mate changed and what species of ani­mals and plants inhab­it­ed the region in the past. This is not only a geo­log­i­cal phe­nom­e­non, but also a trea­sure trove of pale­on­to­log­i­cal finds. Over the years of research, numer­ous remains of ancient ani­mals (mam­moths, saber-toothed tigers, etc.) have been dis­cov­ered here.