The Batagaika Crater
Local people call it a doorway to the underworld: a vast, growing scar in the Siberian ground, nearly a kilometre wide.
What was reported
Near the village of Batagay in Yakutia lies a huge crater shaped like a tadpole, nearly a kilometre wide and getting bigger every year. Its walls of frozen earth slump and collapse each summer, and local Yakut people call it a doorway to the underworld.
As it grows, it reveals ancient layers of frozen soil, along with the remains of long-dead animals.
Explanations offered
It is a 'megaslump' caused by thawing permafrost. After forest was cleared in the 1960s, the ground warmed in summer, and the ice in the soil began to melt, so the land collapsed. Scientists study it because its walls hold a record of climate going back hundreds of thousands of years.
- When
- Growing since the 1960s
- Where
- Verkhoyansk district, Yakutia, Russia
- Witnesses
- Local people and scientists
- Status
- Explained
Famous cases are real, widely reported events. Each file sets out what witnesses said and the explanations that have been offered, without taking a side.