The four structures, made with hundreds of mammoth bones and tusks, range in size from about 130 to 260 square feet. It was not clear if the structures had been used as dwellings, or if they were created as bone beds, food caches, burials, or for religious purposes.
Wei Chu of Leiden University and his colleagues dated the small animal bones at the fourth structure and found that they ranged in age from 18,248 to 17,764 years ago. This long-term use supports the idea that the structures had been used as protective dwellings against the harsh climate of the last Ice Age, researchers concluded.
Read the original scholarly article about this research in Open Research Europe. To read about a similar structure excavated in western Russia, go to "Ice Age Ice Box."