Wrangel Island

Wrangel Island (Ostrov Vrangelya, ˈostrəf ˈvrangjɪljə; Умӄиԓир) is an island of the Chukotka Autonomous Okrug, Russia. It is the 91st largest island in the world and roughly the size of Crete. Located in the Arctic Ocean between the Chukchi Sea and East Siberian Sea, the island lies astride the 180th meridian. The International Date Line is therefore displaced eastwards at this latitude to avoid the island as well as the Chukchi Peninsula on the Russian mainland, to keep the island on the same day as the rest of Russia. The closest land to Wrangel Island is the tiny and rocky Herald Island located to the east. Its straddling the 180th meridian makes its north shore at that point both the northeasternmost and northwesternmost point of land in the world by strict longitude; using the International Date Line instead those respective points become Herald Island and Alaska's Cape Lisburne. Most of Wrangel Island and the nearby Herald Island is a federally protected nature sanctuary administered by Russia's Ministry of Natural Resources and Environment. The island, and its surrounding waters, were classified as a "Zapovednik" (a "strict nature reserve") in 1976 and, as such, receive the highest level of protection and exclude practically all human activity other than for scientific purposes. The Chukotka Regional government extended the marine protected area out to in 1999. As of 2003, there were four rangers who reside on the island year-round, while a core group of about 12 scientists conduct research during the summer months. Wrangel Island is the last known place where woolly mammoths survived, until around 4,000 years ago. Captain Thomas Long named Wrangel Island for Baron Ferdinand von Wrangel, who was a Baltic German explorer and Admiral in the Imperial Russian Navy. Captain Long, published in The Honolulu Advertiser, November 1867: I have named this northern land Wrangell Land as an appropriate tribute to the memory of a man who spent three consecutive years north of latitude 68°, and demonstrated the problem of this open polar sea forty-five years ago, although others of much later date have endeavored to claim the merit of this discovery.

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Related concepts (16)

Woolly mammoth

The woolly mammoth (Mammuthus primigenius) is an extinct species of mammoth that lived during the Pleistocene until its extinction in the Holocene epoch. It was one of the last in a line of mammoth species, beginning with the African Mammuthus subplanifrons in the early Pliocene. The woolly mammoth began to diverge from the steppe mammoth about 800,000 years ago in East Asia. Its closest extant relative is the Asian elephant. The Columbian mammoth (Mammuthus columbi) lived alongside the woolly mammoth in North America, and DNA studies show that the two hybridised with each other.

Quaternary extinction event

The latter half of the Late Pleistocene to the beginning of the Holocene (~50,000-10,000 years Before Present) saw extinctions of numerous predominantly megafaunal species, which resulted in a collapse in faunal density and diversity across the globe. The extinctions during the Late Pleistocene are differentiated from previous extinctions by the widespread absence of ecological succession to replace these extinct megafaunal species, and the regime shift of previously established faunal relationships and habitats as a consequence.

Chukchi Sea

The Chukchi Sea (Chukótskoye móre, tɕʊˈkotskəjə ˈmorje), sometimes referred to as the Chuuk Sea, Chukotsk Sea or the Sea of Chukotsk, is a marginal sea of the Arctic Ocean. It is bounded on the west by the Long Strait, off Wrangel Island, and in the east by Point Barrow, Alaska, beyond which lies the Beaufort Sea. The Bering Strait forms its southernmost limit and connects it to the Bering Sea and the Pacific Ocean. The principal port on the Chukchi Sea is Uelen in Russia.