A mysterious anthrax outbreak over the summer killed more than 2,300 reindeer and at least one child.

Freak warm weather followed by a freeze in winter 2013-14 caused an ice-over of pastures which led to the deaths of some 70,000 reindeer in a famine. This summer, there was an outbreak of deadly anthrax after the hottest Arctic summer on record.

There was a town where up to 40% of the population died. Naturally, the bodies were buried under the upper layer of permafrost soil, on the bank of the Kolyma River. Now, a little more than 100 years later, Kolyma's floodwaters have started eroding the banks.'

Russian officials have said the death of a 12-year-old boy, a member of a reindeer-herding family from the Yamal tundra 1,300 miles north of Moscow, was the first fatality in Siberia linked to the pathogen since 1941. Twenty others have been diagnosed with anthrax.

Melted permafrost that exposed an infected reindeer carcass is believed to have resulted in the cases that killed a 12-year-boy and sickened eight others.

Seventy-two nomadic herders, including 41 children, were hospitalised in far north Russia after the region began experiencing abnormally high temperatures